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WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN 
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THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK    •    BOSTON  •    CHICAGO  •    DALLAS 
ATLANTA  •    SAN   FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  LIMITED 

LONDON  •    BOMBAY  •    CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  LTD. 

TORONTO 


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WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY 
IN  FRANCE 

A  FEW  CHAPTERS  OF  AN  AMERICAN 
EFFORT 


BY 

EDWARD  HUNGERFORD 

Author  of  The  Modern  Railroad,  The  Personality 
of  American  Cities,  etc.,  etc. 


got* 

THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 
1920 

All  rights  reserved, 


COPYRIGHT,  1920, 
BY  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 


Set  up  and  electrotyped.    Published  November,  1920. 


TO  THE 
CROIX  ROUGE  AMERICAINE 

The  girl  in  the  steel-gray  uniform  with  the  crimson  crosses, 

who  toiled  and  endured  and  danced   and  laughed 

and  lived,  that  the  heart  and  soul  of  the 

boy  in  khaki  might  remain  untroubled, 

this  book  is  affectionately 

inscribed 


5034-.J. 


PREFACE 

Six  months  ago  I  finished  writing  the  chapters  of  this 
book.  At  that  time  the  American  Red  Cross  still  had  a 
considerable  force  in  Paris  —  throughout  France  for 
that  matter.  It  was  still  functioning  and,  after  its  fash- 
ion, functioning  extremely  well.  In  the  language  of  the 
French  it  "  marched."  To-day  its  marching  days  in  the 
land  of  the  lilies  are  nearly  over.  The  personnel  have 
nearly  all  returned  home;  the  few  that  remain  are  clear- 
ing and  packing  the  records.  In  a  short  time  the  Croix 
Rouge  Americaine  which  for  months  was  so  evident  in  the 
streets  of  the  French  capital  will  be  but  a  memory  along 
the  Boulevards.  But  a  memory  of  accomplishment  not 
soon  to  be  forgotten.  If  there  is  one  undying  virtue  of 
the  Frenchman  it  is  that  of  memory.  Seemingly  he  can- 
not forget.  And  for  years  the  remembrance  of  our  Red 
Cross  in  his  land  is  going  to  be  a  pleasant  thought  indeed. 
Of  that  I  am  more  than  sure. 

To  attempt  to  write  a  history,  that  should  be  at  all  ade- 
quate as  complete  history,  of  a  great  effort  which  was  still 
in  progress,  as  the  writing  went  forward,  would  have  been 
a  lamentable  task  indeed.  So  this  book  makes  no  pose  as 
history;  it  simply  aims  to  be  a  picture,  or  a  series  of  pic- 
tures of  America  in  a  big  job,  the  pictures  made  from  the 
standpoint  of  a  witnesser  of  her  largest  humanitarian  ef- 
fort —  the  work  of  the  American  Red  Cross. 

I  should  feel  embarrassed,  moreover,  at  signing  my  name 
to  this  book  were  any  reader  of  it  to  believe  that  it  was  in 
any  large  sense  whatsoever  a  "  one  man "  production. 
The  size  of  the  field  to  be  covered,  the  brief  space  of  time 
allotted  in  which  to  make  some  sort  of  a  comprehensive 


PREFACE 

picture  of  a  really  huge  endeavor,  made  it  necessary  for 
the  author  to  call  for  help  in  all  directions.  The  answers 
to  that  call  were  immediate  and  generous.  It  hardly 
would  be  possible  within  a  single  chapter  of  this  volume  to 
make  a  complete  list  of  the  men  and  women  who  helped  in 
its  preparation.  But  the  author  does  desire  to  state  his 
profound  sense  of  indebtedness  to  Mrs.  Caroline  Singer 
Mondell,  Mrs.  Kathleen  Hills,  Miss  E.  Buckner  Kirk, 
Major  Daniel  T.  Pierce,  Captain  George  Buchanan  Fife 
and  Lieutenant  William  D.  Hines.  These  have  borne 
with  him  patiently  and  have  been  of  much  real  assistance. 
His  appreciation  is  great. 

This  picture  of  an  American  effort  tells  its  own  story. 
I  have  no  intention  at  this  time  or  place  to  attempt  to 
elaborate  it ;  but  merely  wish  in  passing  to  record  my  per- 
sonal and  sincere  opinion  that,  in  the  workings  of  our  Red 
Cross  overseas,  there  seemed  to  me  to  be  such  an  outpour- 
ing of  affection,  of  patriotism,  of  a  sincere  desire  to  serve 
as  I  have  never  before  seen.  It  was  indeed  a  triumph  for 
our  teachings  and  our  ideals. 

E.  H. 
ISTew  York  —  January,  1920. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  I  PAGE 

AMERICA  AWAKENS  ........    >•••:••      1 

CHAPTEK  II 
OUR  EED  CROSS  GOES  TO  WAR    .........      6 


CHAPTEK  III 
ORGANIZING  FOR  WORK  ..........     .     .     13 

CHAPTEK  IV 
THE  PROBLEM  OF  TRANSPORT  ........     .     .     39 

CHAPTEK  V 

THE  AMERICAN  RED  CROSS  AS  A  DEPARTMENT  STORE  ...    80 

CHAPTER  VI 
THE  DOUGHBOY  MOVES  TOWARD  THE  FRONT  .......  100 


CHAPTER 
THE  RED  CROSS  ON  THE  FIELD  OF  HONOR  .....     .  128 

CHAPTER  VIII 

OUR  RED  CROSS  PERFORMS  ITS  SUPREME  MISSION  .     .     .     .182 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  IX  PAGE 

THE  KED  CROSS  IN  THE  HOSPITALS  OF  THE  A.  E.  F.    .     .     .  208 

CHAPTEE  X 
"PACK  UP  YOUR  TROUBLES  IN  YOUR  OLD  KIT  BAG"  ...  238 

CHAPTER  XI 
WHEN  JOHNNY  CAME  MARCHING  HOME 259 

CHAPTER  XII 
THE  GIRL  WHO  WENT  TO  WAR    .     .  .278 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


SUPPER  HOUR  AT  BORDEAUX Frontispiece 

No  matter  what  hour;  always  the  gobs  and  buddies  — 
other  armies  as  well  as  our  own  —  ready  with  100  per 
cent  appetites.  FACING 

PAGE 

So  THIS  Is  PARIS 20 

A.  E.  F.  Boys,  guests  of  our  A.  R  C.  in  its  great  hos- 
pital at  St.  Cloud,  look  down  about  the  "  Queen  City  of 
the  World." 

CHOW     " 62 

The  rolling  kitchens,  builded  on  trailers  to  motor 
trucks,  brought  hot  drinks  and  food  right  up  to  the  men 
in  action. 

OUR  KED  CROSS  AT  THE  FRONT 100 

A  typical  A.  E.  C.  dugout  just  behind  the  lines. 

As  SEEN  FROM  ALOFT 140 

The  aeroplane  man  gets  the  most  definite  impression  at 
the  A.  R.  C.  Hospital  at  Issordun,  which  was  typical 
at  these  field  institutions. 

TICKLING  THE  OLD  IVORIES 180 

Many  an  ancient  piano  did  herculean  service  in  the 
A.  R.  C.  recreation  huts  throughout  France. 

BANDAGES  BY  THE  TENS  OF  THOUSANDS 220 

An  atelier  workshop  of  the  A.  R.  C.  in  the  Rue  St. 
Didier,  Paris,  daily  turned  out  surgical  dressings  by 
the  mile. 

NEVER  SAY  DIE 262 

Sorely  wounded,  our  boys  at  the  great  A.  R.  C.  field 
hospital  in  the  Auteuil  race  track  outside  of  Paris, 
kept  an  active  interest  in  games  and  sports. 


WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY 
IN  FRANCE 


CHAPTEE  I 

AMERICA  AWAKENS 

IN  that  supreme  hour  when  the  United  States  consecrated 
herself  to  a  world  ideal  and  girded  herself  for  the 
struggle,  to  the  death,  if  necessary,  in  defense  of  that  ideal, 
the  American  Eed  Cross  was  ready.  Long  before  that 
historic  evening  of  the  sixth  of  April,  1917,  when  Con- 
gress made  its  grim  determination  to  enter  the  cause  "  for 
the  democracy  of  the  world,"  the  Red  Cross  in  the  United 
States  had  felt  the  prescience  of  oncoming  war.  For 
nearly  three  years  it  had  heard  of,  nay  even  seen,  the 
unspeakable  horrors  of  the  war  into  which  it  was  so  soon  to 
be  thrust.  It  had  witnessed  the  cruelties  of  the  most 
modern  and  scientific  of  conflicts;  a  war  in  which  science 
seemingly  had  but  multiplied  the  horrors  of  all  the  wars 
that  had  gone  before.  Science  and  kultur  between  them 
had  done  this  very  thing.  In  the  weary  months  of  the  con- 
flict that  began  with  August,  1914,  the  American  Red 
Cross  had  taken  far  more  than  a  merely  passive  interest  in 
the  Great  War  overseas.  It  had  watched  its  sister  organ- 
izations from  the  allied  countries,  already  involved  in  the 
conflict,  struggle  in  Belgium  and  France  and  Russia 
against  terrific  odds ;  it  had  bade  each  of  these  "  Godspeed/7 
and  uttered  many  silent  prayers  for  their  success.  The 
spirit  of  Florence  Nightingale  and  Clara  Barton  still 
lived  —  and  still  enthused. 

It  would  have  been  odd  —  almost  inconceivable,  in  fact 


2      WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

—  if  anything  else  had  been  true.     It  would  have  been 
unpardonable  if  the  American  Ked  Cross  had  not,  long 
before  our  entrance  into  the  conflict,  scented  that  forth- 
coming step,   and,  having  thus  anticipated  history,  had 
failed  to  make  the  most  of  the  situation.     We  Americans 
pride  ourselves  as  a  nation  upon  our  foresightedness,  and 
an  institution  so  distinctly  American  as  the  American  Red 
Cross  could  hardly  fail  to  have  such  a  virtue  imbedded  in 
the  backbone  of  its  character. 

Ofttimes,  as  a  boy,  have  I  read  of  the  warriors  of  long 
ago,  and  how,  when  they  prepared  for  battle,  it  was  their 
women  —  their  wives  and  their  mothers,  if  you  please, — 
who  girded  them  for  the  conflict ;  who  breathed  the  prayers 
for  their  success,  and  who,  whether  or  not  they  succeeded 
in  attaining  that  success,  bound  up  their  wounds  and  gave 
them  comfort  upon  their  return.  Such  is  the  spirit  of  the 
Red  Cross.  The  American  artist  who  created  that  most 
superb  of  all  posters,  The  Greatest  Mother  in  the  World, 
and  who  placed  in  the  arms  of  that  majestic  and  calm- 
faced  woman  the  miniature  figure  of  a  soldier  resting  upon 
a  stretcher,  sensed  that  spirit.  The  American  Red  Cross 
is  indeed  the  greatest  mother  in  the  world,  and  what  mother 

—  what    American    mother   in    particular  —  could    have 
failed  in  the  early  spring  of  1917  to  anticipate  the  inevit- 
able ?     Certainly  none  of  the  mothers  of  the  hundred  thou- 
sand or  more  boys  who  anticipated  our  own  formal  entrance 
into  the  Great  War,  by  offering  themselves  —  bodies  and 
hearts  and  souls  —  to  the  armies  of  Britain,  France,  and 
Canada. 

Other  pens  more  skilled  than  mine  have  told,  and  will 
continue  to  tell,  of  the  organization  of  the  Red  Cross  at 
home  to  meet  the  certainties  and  the  necessities  of  the  on- 
coming war.  For  if  America  had  not  heretofore  realized 
the  magnitude  of  the  task  that  was  to  confront  her  and  had 
even  permitted  herself  to  become  dulled  to  the  horrors  of 
the  conflict  overseas,  the  historic  evening  of  the  sixth  of 
April,  191Y,  awakened  her.  It  galvanized  her  from  a 


AMERICA  AWAKENS  3 

passive  repugnance  at  the  scenes  of  the  tragic  drama  being 
enacted  upon  the  great  stage  of  Europe  into  a  bitter  deter- 
mination that,  having  been  forced  into  the  conflict,  no 
matter  for  what  reason,  she  would  see  it  through  to  victory ; 
and  no  matter  what  the  cost.  Yet  cost  in  this  sense  was 
never  to  be  interpreted  into  recklessness.  Her  boys  were 
among  her  most  precious  possessions,  and,  if  she  were  to 
give  them  without  stint  and  without  reserve  —  all  for  the 
glory  of  her  supreme  ideal  —  she  would  at  least  surround 
them  with  every  possible  requisite  for  their  health,  their 
comfort,  and  their  strength.  This  was,  and  is,  and  will 
remain,  the  fundamental  American  policy. 

With  such  a  policy,  where  should  America  turn  save  to 
her  Eed  Cross  ?  And  who  more  fit  to  stand  as  its  spiritual 
and  actual  head  than  her  President  himself?  So  was  it 
done.  And  when  President  Wilson  found  that  the  grave 
responsibilities  of  his  other  great  war  tasks  would  prevent 
him  from  giving  the  American  Red  Cross  the  detailed  at- 
tention which  it  needed,  he  quickly  appointed  a  War  Coun- 
cil. This  War  Council  was  hard  at  work  in  a  little  over  a 
month  after  the  signing  of  the  declaration  of  war.  It 
established  itself  in  the  headquarters  building  of  the  Red 
Cross  in  the  city  of  Washington  and  quickly  began  prepa- 
rations for  the  great  task  just  ahead. 

For  the  fiber  of  this  War  Council  the  President  scanned 
closely  the  professional  and  business  ranks  of  American 
men.  He  reached  out  here  and  there  and  chose  —  here 
and  there.  And,  in  a  similar  way,  the  War  Council  chose 
its  own  immediate  staff.  A  man  from  a  New  York  city 
banking  house  would  find  his  office  or  his  desk  —  it  was 
not  every  executive  that  could  have  an  office  to  himself  in 
those  days  —  adjoining  that  of  a  ranch  owner  from  Mon- 
tana or  Wyoming.  The  lawyer  closed  his  brief  case  and 
the  doctor  placed  his  practice  in  other  hands.  The  manu- 
facturer bade  his  plant  "  good-by  "  and  the  big  mining 
expert  ceased  for  the  moment  to  think  of  lodes  and  strata. 


4      WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

A  common  cause  —  a  common  necessity  —  was  binding 
them  together. 

War! 

War  was  the  cause  and  war  the  necessity.  A  real  war  it 
was,  too  —  a  real  war  of  infinite  possibilities  and  of  very 
real  dangers;  war,  the  thing  of  alarms  and  of  huge  re- 
sponsibilities, and  for  that  war  we  must  prepare. 

It  was  said  that  America  was  unready,  and  so  it  was  - 
in  a  way.  It  was  unprepared  in  material  things  —  aero- 
planes and  guns  and  ships  and  well-trained  men.  But  its 
resources  in  both  money  and  in  men  who  had  potential 
possibilities  of  becoming  the  finest  soldiers  the  world  had 
ever  seen,  were  vast,  almost  limitless.  And  it  was  pre- 
pared in  idealism,  and  had  assuredly  a  certain  measure  of 
ability.  It  was  prepared  too  to  use  such  ability  as  it 
had  in  turning  its  resources  —  money  and  untrained  men 
—  into  a  fighting  army  of  material  things ;  material  things 
and  idealism.  One  thing  or  the  other  helped  win  the 
conflict 

"  They  said  that  we  could  not  raise  an  army ;  that  if  we 
did  raise  it,  we  could  not  transport  it  overseas ;  and  that  if 
we  did  transport  it  overseas,  it  could  not  fight  —  and  in 
one  day  it  wiped  out  the  St.  Mihiel  salient." 

These  words  tell  the  entire  story  —  almost.  Not  that 
it  becomes  us  Americans  to  talk  too  much  about  our  forces 
having  won  the  war.  Eor  one  thing,  it  is  not  true.  The 
British  and  the  French  armies  also  won  the  war,  and  if 
both  had  not  hung  on  so  tenaciously  ours  would  not  even  be 
a  fair  share  of  the  victory.  But  for  them  there  would  have 
been  no  victory,  not  on  our  side  of  the  Rhine,  at  any  rate, 
and  men  in  Berlin,  instead  of  in  Paris,  would  have  been 
dictating  peace  terms. 

It  is  true,  however,  that  without  our  army,  and  certainly 
without  our  moral  prestige  and  our  resources,  the  fight  for 
democracy  might  have  been  lost  at  this  time,  and  for  many 
years  hereafter.  Count  that  for  organization  —  for  real 


AMERICA  AWAKENS  5 

American  achievement,  if  you  please.  We  builded  a  ma- 
chine, a  huge  machine,  a  machine  not  without  defects  and 
some  of  them  rather  glaring  defects  as  you  come  close  to 
them,  but  it  was  a  machine  that  functioned,  and,  upon  the 
whole,  functioned  extremely  well.  It  took  raw  materials 
—  men  among  them  —  and  fashioned  them  into  fighting 
materials ;  fighting  materials  which  flowed  in  one  channel 
or  another  toward  the  fighting  front  overseas.  And  with 
one  of  these  channels  —  the  work  of  the  American  Red 
Cross  with  the  Army  of  the  United  States  in  France  — 
this  book  has  to  do. 


CHAPTER  II 

OUR   RED    CROSS    GOES    TO    WAR 

ON"  the  day  that  General  John  J.  Pershing  first  came 
to  Paris  —  it  was  the  thirteenth  of  June,  1917  --  the 
American  Red  Cross  already  was  there.  It  greeted  the 
American  commanding  general  on  his  arrival  at  the  French 
capital,  an  occasion  long  to  be  remembered  even  in  a  city 
of  memorable  celebrations.  For  hours  the  historic  Place 
de  la  Concorde  was  thronged  with  patient  folk.  It  was 
known  that  General  Pershing  was  to  be  quartered  at  the 
Hotel  Crillon  —  since  come  to  a  new  fame  as  the  head- 
quarters of  the  American  Commission  to  Negotiate  Peace 
—  and  it  was  in  front  of  the  doors  of  that  establishment 
that  the  crowd  stood  thickest.  There  were  many,  many 
thousands  of  these  waiting  folk,  close-packed  upon  the 
pavement,  and  only  giving  way  to  a  dusty  limousine  in 
which  sat  the  man  who  was  to  help  bring  salvation  to 
France  and  freedom  to  the  democracy  of  the  world. 

After  the  doors  of  the  hotel  had  swallowed  General 
Pershing  and  his  French  hosts,  the  crowd  refused  to  dis- 
perse ;  also,  it  became  less  patient.  A  long  swinging  chant 
began  —  the  typical  chant  of  the  Paris  mob.  "Balcon, 
balcon,  balcon"  it  sang  in  rhythmic  monotony,  and  upon 
the  balcony  of  the  hotel  in  a  few  minutes  Pershing  ap- 
peared, while  the  crowd  below  him  went  wild  in  its  en- 
thusiasm. 

But  before  the  American  commanding  general  had  made 
his  appearance  upon  the  balcony  he  had  been  greeted  in  the 
parlors  of  the  Crillon,  both  formally  and  informally,  by 
the  members  of  the  first  American  Red  Cross  Commission 
to  Europe.  By  coincidence  that  Commission  had  arrived 
in  Paris  that  very  morning  from  America,  and  were  the 


OUR  RED  CROSS  GOES  TO  WAR        7 

first  Americans  to  greet  their  high  commanding  officer  in 
France.  And  so  also  to  give  him  promise  that  the  organ- 
ization which  they  represented  would  he  ready  for  the  army 
as  soon  as  it  was  ready;  for  back  in  the  United  States 
widespread  plans  for  the  great  undertaking  so  close  at 
hand  already  were  well  under  way. 

This  American  Commission  had  sailed  from  New  York 
on  the  steamship  Lorraine,  of  the  French  Compagnie 
Generale  Transatlantique,  on  the  second  day  of  June.  It 
consisted  of  eighteen  men,  headed  by  Major  Gray  son  M.- 
P.  Murphy,  a  West  Point  man  of  some  years  of  active 
army  training  and  also  a  New  York  banker  of  wide  expe- 
rience. The  other  members  of  the  party  were  James  H. 
Perkins,  afterward  Ked  Cross  Commissioner  for  France; 
William  Endicott,  afterward  Red  Cross  Commissioner  for 
Great  Britain ;  Frederick  S.  Hoppin,  Rev.  Robert  Davis, 
Rev.  E.  D.  Miel,  F.  R.  King,  Philip  Goodwin,  Ernest  Mc- 
Cullough,  Ernest  T.  Bicknell,  C.  G.  Osborne,  R.  J.  Daly, 
A.  W.  Copp,  John  van  Schaick,  and  Thomas  H.  Kenny. 
They  were  men  who  had  been  hastily  recruited  and  yet  not 
without  some  special  qualifications  for  the  difficult  pre- 
liminary work  which  they  were  about  to  undertake.  Until 
the  preliminary  "  get-acquainted  "  luncheon  which  Major 
Murphy  gave  for  the  party  in  New  York  on  the  day  pre- 
ceding its  sailing,  comparatively  few  of  them  knew  one 
another.  Yet  the  great  task  into  which  they  were  entering 
was  to  make  them  lifelong  friends,  and  to  develop  for  the 
Red  Cross,  both  in  Europe  and  in  America,  many  execu- 
tives whose  real  abilities  had  not  really  been  attained  at  the 
time  of  their  appointment  to  Red  Cross  service. 

These  men  were  volunteers.  With  a  few  exceptions, 
such  as  clerical  workers  and  the  like,  the  early  members  of 
the  Red  Cross  served  without  pay.  At  first  they  had  no 
military  rank.  Apart  from  Major  Murphy,  who  bore  the 
title  of  Commissioner  to  Europe  —  there  being  at  the  time 
no  separate  Commissioner  to  France  or  to  Great  Britain 
— -there  were  merely  deputy  commissioners,  inspectors, 


8      WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

and  secretaries.  Major  Murphy's  title  had  come  to  him 
through  his  army  service.  It  was  not  until  some  time  later 
that  the  War  Department  issued  General  Orders  No.  82 
(July  5,  1917),  conferring  titles  and  fixing  the  assimilated 
rank  of  Red  Cross  personnel.  Accordingly  commissions 
and  rank  were  given  and  the  khaki  uniform  of  the  United 
States  Army  adopted,  with  distinctive  Red  Cross  markings. 
Though  it  is  not  generally  understood,  American  Red  Cross 
officers  have  received  from  the  President  of  the  United 
States,  issued  through  and  over  the  signature  of  the  Secre- 
tary of  War,  commissions  which  appointed  them  to  their 
rank  and  held  them  to  the  discipline  and  the  honor  of  the 
United  States  Army. 

Before  the  Lorraine  was  well  out  of  the  upper  harbor  of 
New  York  on  that  memorable  second  day  of  June,  Major 
Murphy  called  a  meeting  of  the  Commission.  He  ex- 
plained to  them  in  a  few  words  that  they  were,  in  effect, 
even  then,  military  officers  and  would  be  expected  to  observe 
military  discipline,  and  as  a  beginning  would  appear  at 
dinner  that  evening  in  their  uniforms  —  the  army  regula- 
tions at  that  time  prevented  relief  workers  of  any  sort  ap- 
pearing in  the  United  States  in  their  overseas  uniforms 
—  and  thereafter  would  not  appear  without  their  uniforms 
until  their  return  to  America.  The  grim,  business  of  war 
seemingly  was  close  at  hand.  It  began  in  actuality  when 
one  first  donned  its  accouterments,  and  was  by  no  means 
lessened  in  effect  by  the  stern  war-time  rules  and  discipline 
of  a  merchant  ship  which,  each  time  she  crossed  the  At- 
lantic, did  so  at  grave  peril. 

Yet  peril  was  not  the  thing  that  was  uppermost  in  the 
minds  of  this  pioneer  Red  Cross  party.  It  took  the  many 
rules  of  "  lights  out  "  and  "  life  preservers  to  be  donned, 
sil  vous  plait"  boat  drill,  and  all  the  rest  of  this  partic- 
ularly grim  part  of  the  bigger  grim  business,  good-hum- 
oredly  and  light-heartedly,  yet  kept  its  mind  on  the  grim- 
mer business  on  the  other  side  of  the  Atlantic.  And,  so 


OUR  RED  CROSS  GOES  TO  WAR        9 

that  it  might  become  more  efficient  in  that  grimmest  busi- 
ness, undertook  for  itself  the  study  of  French  —  at  one 
and  the  same  time  the  most  lovable  and  most  damnable  of 
all  languages. 

"  I  shall  not  consider  as  efficient  any  member  of  the 
party  who  does  not  acquire  enough  French  to  be  able  to 
navigate  in  France  under  his  own  power  in  three  months." 

Major  Murphy  laughed  as  he  said  this,  but  he  meant 
business.  And  so  did  the  members  of  the  Commission. 
As  the  ship  settled  down  to  the  routine  of  her  passage,  the 
members  of  the  Commission  settled  down  to  a  life-and- 
death  struggle  with  French.  For  two  long  hours  each 
morning  they  went  at  it.  At  first  they  gathered  in  little 
groups  upon  the  decks,  each  headed  by  some  one  capable  of 
giving  more  or  less  instruction ;  then  they  found  their  way 
to  the  lounge,  where  they  grouped  themselves  round  about 
a  young  woman  from  Smith  College  who  had  taught  French 
in  that  institution  for  some  years.  It  was  this  young 
woman's  self-inflicted  job  to  give  conversational  lessons  to 
the  Red  Cross  party,  and  this  she  did  with  both  enthusiasm 
and  ability.  She  chose  to  give  them  conversational  French 
—  in  the  form  of  certain  simple  and  dramatic  little  child- 
hood epics. 

"  This  morning  we  will  have  the  story  of  Little  Red 
Riding  Hood,"  she  would  say,  "  and  after  I  am  done 
telling  it  to  you  in  French,  you  gentlemen,  one  by  one,  will 
tell  it  back  to  me  —  in  French." 

In  order  that  the  effect  of  the  lesson  should  not  be  too 
quickly  lost  Major  Murphy  ruled  that  French,  and  no 
other  language,  should  be  both  official  and  unofficial  for 
luncheon  each  day.  This  order  quickly  converted  an  or- 
dinarily genial  meal  into  a  Quaker  meeting.  For  when 
one  of  mademoiselle's  more  enthusiastic  pupils  would  start 
an  audacious  request  for  "  Encore  le  pain,  s'il  vous  plail" 
he  was  almost  sure  to  be  greeted  either  with  groans  or  grins 
from  his  fellows.  Yet  the  lessons  of  those  short  ten  days 
were  invaluable.  Many  of  the  men  of  that  party  who 


10      WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

since  have  attained  more  than  a  "  navigating  "  knowledge 
of  French  have  to  thank  the  lady  from  Smith  College  for 
their  opportunity  to  acquire  it.  The  "  bit  "  that  she  did 
for  the  Red  Cross  was  perhaps  small,  but  it  was  exceedingly 
valuable. 

Afternoons,  sometimes  evenings,  too,  were  given  to  busi- 
ness conferences  wherein  ways  and  means  for  meeting  the 
big  problem  so  close  ahead  were  given  attention.  It  mat- 
ters not  that  many  of  the  plans  so  carefully  developed  upon 
the  Lorraine  were,  of  necessity,  abandoned  after  the  party 
reached  France.  The  very  men  who  were  making  these 
plans  realized  as  they  were  making  them  that  field  serv- 
ice —  actual  practice,  if  you  please  —  is  far  different  from 
theory,  and  as  they  planned,  felt  that  the  very  labor  they 
were  undergoing  might  yet  have  to  be  thrown  away,  al- 
though not  completely  wasted.  For  the  members  of  that 
pioneer  Red  Cross  Commission  were  gaining  one  thing  of 
which  no  situation  whatsoever  might  deprive  them;  they 
were  gaining  an  experience  in  teamwork  that  was  to  be 
invaluable  in  the  busy  weeks  and  months  that  were  to  follow. 

Very  early  in  the  morning  of  the  twelfth  of  June  the 
Lorraine  slipped  into  the  mouth  of  the  Gironde  river ;  for 
the  Compagnie  Generale  Transatlantique,  driven  from 
Havre  by  the  submarine  menace  and  the  necessity  of  giving 
up  the  Seine  embrochure  to  the  great  transport  necessities 
of  the  British,  had  been  forced  to  concentrate  its  activities 
at  Bordeaux,  the  ancient  port  of  the  Gascogne  country. 
The  ship  crossed  the  bar  at  the  uncomfortable  hour  of  three 
in  the  morning,  and  the  Red  Cross  party  first  realized  the 
fact  that  in  army  life  night  hours  and  day  hours  are  all 
the  same,  when  it  was  ordered  to  arise  at  once  and  face 
the  customs  and  the  passport  inspectors.  That  inspection 
was  slow  work,  yet  not  delaying.  For  the  Gironde  runs  to 
the  sea  many  miles  after  it  passes  the  curving  quay  and  the 
two  great  bridges  of  Bordeaux.  The  fact  that  the  Lorraine 
was  able  to  reach  the  quay  well  before  noon  was  due  not 


OUR  RED  CROSS  GOES  TO  WAR  11 

only  to  her  being  a  good  ship  but  to  the  fact  that  she  had 
both  wind  and  tide  in  her  favor. 

At  fifteen  minutes  before  twelve  she  docked  and  the  Red 
Cross  party  faced  the  city  of  Bordeaux,  flat  yet  not  unim- 
pressive, with  the  same  graceful  quay,  the  trees,  and  the 
old  houses  lining  it,  and  in  the  distance  the  lofty  spires 
of  the  lovely  cathedral,  with  the  even  loftier  spire  of  St. 
Michel  in  the  farther  distance.  Even  the  uninitiated 
might  see  upon  this  last  the  complications  of  a  wireless 
station  and  understand  that  here  was  one  of  the  posts  from 
which  France  spake  far  overseas. 

It  is  but  a  night's  ride  from  Bordeaux  to  Paris,  even 
though  it  is  close  to  four  hundred  miles  between  the  two 
cities.  That  very  evening  Major  Murphy  and  his  party 
boarded  the  night  train  of  the  Orleans  Railway  for  the 
capital,  and  had  their  first  real  touch  of  war's  hardships. 
The  night  train  was  very  crowded.  It  is  nearly  always 
crowded.  It  was  then  running  a  solitary  sleeping  car,  but 
two  or  three  of  the  older  members  of  the  party  were  able  to 
get  reservations.  Still  other  fortunate  ones  were  able  to 
obtain  seats.  The  rest  of  the  party  stood  throughout  the 
tiresome  journey  of  twelve  long  hours.  Major  Murphy 
himself  stood  the  entire  night,  akimbo  over  the  prostrate 
body  of  a  groaning,  snoring  poilu,  yet  was  the  first  to  be 
ready  at  the  Gare  d'Orsay  on  the  morrow;  to  be  here, 
there,  and  everywhere  seeing  that  all  were  provided  with 
proper  hotel  accommodations.  After  which  he  forged 
through  the  crowd  to  the  Crillon,  there  to  meet  the  hero 
of  the  day  coming  to  Paris  with  "  Papa  Joffre  " —  and,  like 
himself,  every  inch  an  American.  After  which  again  it 
was  in  order  to  repair  to  the  American  Relief  Clearing 
House  in  the  Rue  Francois  Premier  to  prepare  directly 
for  the  big  job  now  so  close  at  hand. 

I  have  described  the  voyage  of  this  first  Red  Cross  party 
overseas,  not  only  because  it  was  the  first,  but  also  because 
it  was  so  very  typical  of  many  others  to  follow.  Many 


12      WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

and  many  a  Red  Cross  man  and  Eed  Cross  woman,  to  say 
nothing  of  veritable  hosts  of  doughboys  and  their  officers, 
had  their  first  glimpse  of  lovely  France  as  they  sailed  up 
the  broad  Gironde  and  into  that  lovely  port  of  Bordeaux. 
The  curving  quay,  the  spires  of  the  lovely  cathedral,  and 
the  more  distant  but  higher  spire  of  St.  Michel  was  the 
picture  that  greeted  thousands  of  them.  At  least  hun- 
dreds of  them  rode  in  the  night  train  of  the  Orleans  Rail- 
way to  Paris,  and  in  all  probability  stood  the  entire  dis- 
tance. For  traveling  in  France  in  the  days  of  the  Great 
War  was  hard  whether  by  train  or  by  automobile. 

Before  I  am  done  with  this  book  I  am  going  to  describe 
the  Atlantic  crossing  of  one  of  the  final  Red  Cross  parties. 
I  belonged  to  one  of  those  parties  myself  and  so  am  able  to 
write  from  first-hand  knowledge.  But  between  the  original 
expedition  and  the  one  in  which  I  sailed  were  many  others ; 
others  of  far  greater  import.  For  our  Uncle  Samuel  was 
aroused,  and,  once  aroused,  and  having  resolved  that  hav- 
ing entered  the  great  fight  he  would  give  his  all,  if  neces- 
sary, toward  its  winning,  he  began  pouring  overseas  not 
only  his  fighting  legions  but  his  armies  of  relief,  of  which 
the  Red  Cross  is  part  and  parcel. 


CHAPTEE  III 

ORGANIZING  FOR  WORK 

AT  No.  5  Rue  Francois  Premier  stood  the  American 
Relief  Clearing  House.  It  was  a  veritable  light- 
house, a  tower  of  strength,  if  you  please,  to  an  oppressed 
and  suffering  people.  '  To  its  doors  came  the  offerings  of 
a  friendly  folk  overseas  who  needed  not  the  formal  action 
of  their  Congress  before  their  sympathies  and  their  purse- 
strings  were  to  be  touched,  but  who  were  given  heartfelt 
American  response  almost  before  the  burning  of  Louvain 
had  been  accomplished.  And  from  those  doors  poured 
forth  that  relief,  in  varied  form,  but  with  but  one  object, 
the  relief  of  suffering  and  misery. 

Until  the  coming  of  the  American  Red  Cross  and  its  kin- 
dred organizations,  this  Clearing  House  was  to  Paris  —  to 
all  France,  in  fact  —  almost  the  sole  expression  of  the  real 
sentiment  of  the  United  States.  It  was  organized,  and 
well  organized,  with  a  definite  purpose ;  on  the  one  hand  the 
avoidance  of  useless  duplications  and  overlappings,  to  say 
nothing  of  possible  frictions,  and  upon  the  other  the  heart- 
felt desire  to  accomplish  the  largest  measure  of  good  with 
means  that  were  not  always  too  ample  despite  the  desire 
of  the  folk  who  were  executing  them.  More  than  this,  the 
American  Relief  Clearing  House  had  a  practical  purpose  in 
endeavoring  to  meet  the  everyday  problems  of  transporta- 
tion of  relief  supplies.  This  phase  of  its  work  we  shall  see 
again  when  we  consider  the  organization  of  the  transporta- 
tion department  of  the  American  Red  Cross  in  France.  It 
is  enough  to  say  here  and  now  that  it  possessed  a  very  small 
number  of  trucks  and  touring  cars  which  were  worked  to 

13 


14      WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

their  fullest  possibilities,  and  seemingly  even  beyond,  in 
the  all  but  vain  effort  to  keep  abreast  of  the  incoming  relief 
supplies. 

In  fact  the  American  Relief  Clearing  House  in  its 
largest  endeavors  was  in  reality  a  forwarding  agency  and, 
although  possessing  no  large  transportation  facilities  of  its 
own,  made  large  use  of  existing  commercial  agencies  and 
those  of  the  governments  of  the  Allies,  to  forward  its  relief 
supplies  to  their  destination;  whereupon  it  advised  Amer- 
ica not  only  of  the  receipt  of  these  supplies  but  of  the  uses 
to  which  they  were  put.  The  main  framework  of  the  or- 
ganization consisted  of  a  staff  of  clerks  who  kept  track  of 
the  movements  of  shipments  and  who  saw  to  it  that  no 
undue  delay  occurred  in  their  continuous  transit  from 
sender  to  recipient. 

J.  H.  Jordain  was  the  chief  operating  manager  of  this 
Clearing  House,  while  Oscar  H.  Beatty  was  its  Director- 
General.  Closely  affiliated  with  the  success  of  the  enter- 
prise were  Herman  H.  Harjes,  the  Paris  representative 
of  a  great  New  York  banking  house,  a  man  whom  we  shall 
find  presently  at  the  head  of  one  of  the  great  ambulance 
relief  works  which  preceded  the  coming  of  the  American 
Red  Cross,  J.  Ridgely  Carter,  James  R.  Barbour,  and 
Ralph  Preston.  Mr.  Preston  crossed  to  France  on  the 
Lorraine  with  the  preliminary  party  of  survey  and  was  of 
very  great  help  at  the  outset  in  the  formation  of  its  definite 
plans. 

The  most  dramatic  feature  perhaps  of  the  American 
Relief  Clearing  House  was  the  Norton-Harjes  Ambulance 
Service,  which  was  closely  affiliated  with  it.  This  organi- 
zation was  founded  in  the  early  days  of  1914  by  two  men, 
each  acting  independently  of  the  other,  who,  by  personal 
influence  and  a  great  amount  of  individual  activity,  suc- 
ceeded in  forming  ambulance  sections  of  the  French  Army 
maintained  by  American  funds  and  manned  by  American 
boys  and  nurses  who  could  not  wait  for  the  formal  action 
of  their  government  before  flinging  themselves  into 


ORGANIZING  FOR  WORK  15 

Europe's  great  war  for  world  democracy.  These  two  sec- 
tions first  were  known  as  Sections  Sanitaire  Nu.  5  and  Nu. 
6  of  the  French  Army.  At  a  later  day  it  was  found  better 
policy,  as  well  as  more  convenient  and  more  economical,  to 
merge  these  two  sections.  This  was  done,  and  the  merged 
sections  became  known  more  or  less  formally  as  the  Norton- 
liar  jes  Ambulance  Service. 

At  the  time  of  the  arrival  of  the  American  Red  Cross  in 
France  this  organization  actually  had  in  the  field  five  sec- 
tions of  twenty  cars  each,  two  men  to  a  car  and  two  officers 
to  a  section.  The  men  who  offered  themselves  for  this 
work  were  all  volunteers  and  were,  for  the  most  part,  col- 
lege graduates  and  men  of  a  disposition  to  give  themselves 
to  work  of  this  sort.  A  spirit  of  self-sacrifice  and  self- 
denial  was  represented  everywhere  within  the  ranks  of  the 
organization.  To  have  been  identified  with  the  Norton- 
liar  jes  service  is  to  this  day  a  mark  of  distinction  com- 
parable even  with  that  of  the  ribbon  of  the  Croix  de  Guerre. 

The  Red  Cross  in  the  United  States,  long  before  our 
actual  entrance  into  France,  had  been  helping  this  service 
with  both  money  and  supplies.  It  was  quite  natural  there- 
fore that  it  should  take  over  this  unit,  which  immediately 
assumed  the  name  of  the  American  Red  Cross  Ambulance 
Service.  Between  that  time  and  the  day  on  which  respon- 
sibility for  ambulance  transport  was  taken  over  by  the 
American  Army,  it  organized,  equipped  and  put  in  service 
eight  additional  sections.  Before  disbanding,  the  number 
of  men  had  been  brought  to  over  six  hundred,  five  hundred 
and  fifty  of  them  at  the  front  and  the  remainder  in  training 
camp. 

A  third  facility  of  the  American  Relief  Clearing  House 
which  is  worthy  of  passing  note  was  the  American  Distrib- 
uting Service,  organized  and  financed  by  Mr.  and  Mrs. 
Robert  W.  Bliss  of  our  embassy  in  Paris.  It  was  first  put 
in  operation  to  furnish  supplies  to  French  hospitals 
throughout  and  behind  the  fighting  areas.  It  operated  a 
small  warehouse  in  which  many  specialties  —  surgical  in- 


16      WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

struments  for  a  particular  instance  —  were  received  and  in 
due  turn  distributed. 

For  a  short  time  after  the  arrival  of  the  first  Commis- 
sion from  America,  the  possibility  of  affiliating  the  Amer- 
ican Red  Cross  with  the  Clearing  House  was  seriously  con- 
sidered. It  became  quite  evident,  however,  that  this  would 
not  be  a  feasible  plan,  but  that  the  American  Red  Cross, 
just  beginning  to  come  into  the  fullness  of  its  strength  as 
a  war-time  organization,  in  order  to  attain  its  fullness  of 
efficiency,  would  have  to  become  the  dominating  factor  of 
relief  in  France.  This  meant  that  the  short  but  useful 
career  of  the  American  Relief  Clearing  House  would  have 
to  be  ended  and  its  identity  lost  in  that  of  the  larger  and 
older  organization.  This  was  done.  The  plant  and  the 
equipment  and  personnel  as  well  of  the  Clearing  House 
were  formally  turned  over  to  the  Red  Cross  Commission 
and  its  first  headquarters  offices  established  there  in  the 
Rue  Francois  Premier,  while  Mr.  Beatty's  title  changed 
from  Director-General  of  the  Clearing  House  to  that  of 
Chief  Executive  Officer  of  the  American  Red  Cross  in 
France. 

The  offices  in  the  Rue  Francois  Premier  almost  imme- 
diately were  found  too  small  for  the  greatly  enlarged  activ- 
ities of  the  Red  Cross,  and  so  the  large  building  on  the 
corner  of  the  Place  de  la  Concorde  and  the  Rue  Royale, 
known  as  No.  4  Place  de  la  Concorde,  was  engaged  as 
headquarters.  These  premises  were  rented  through  Ralph 
Preston  for  $25,000  a  year  and,  although  it  was  not  so 
known  at  the  time,  this  rental  was  paid  by  Mr.  Preston 
out  of  his  own  pocket  as  his  personal  contribution  to  the 
work  of  the  American  Red  Cross.  Seemingly  the  new 
quarters  were  large  indeed;  yet  what  a  task  awaited  the 
secretary  when  he  was  compelled  to  install  a  force  of  three 
hundred  people  in  eighty-six  rooms!  The  executive  of 
modern  business  demands  his  flat-top  desk,  his  push  buttons, 
his  letter  files,  his  stenographer,  his  telephone,  and  "  Num- 


ORGANIZING  FOR  WORK  17 

ber  Four  "  was  a  club  building  —  originally  a  palace  with 
crystal  chandeliers  and  red  carpets  and  high  ceilings  and 
all  the  things  that  go  ordinarily  to  promote  luxury  and 
comfort,  but  do  not  go  very  far  toward  promoting  business 
efficiency. 

Yet  the  thing  was  managed,  and  for  a  time  managed 
very  well  indeed.  But  as  the  work  of  our  Red  Cross  in 
France  progressed,  "  Number  Four  "  grew  too  small,  and 
from  time  to  time  various  overflow,  or  annex  offices  were 
established  near  by  in  the  Rue  Bossy  d' Anglais,  the  Avenue 
Gabriel,  and  the  Rue  de  1'Elysee. 

Yet  in  time  these,  top,  were  found  insufficient.  The 
army  and  the  navy  in  France  kept  growing,  and  with  them, 
and  ahead  of  them,  the  work  of  the  American  Red  Cross. 
Moreover,  it  was  found  in  many  ways  most  unsatisfactory 
to  have  the  work  of  a  single  headquarters  scattered  under  so 
many  different  roofs.  So  in  June,  1918,  these  many  Red 
Cross  activities  were  brought  under  a  single  roof.  With 
the  aid  of  the  French  government  authorities  it  was  enabled 
to  lease  the  six-story  Hotel  Regina  on  the  Place  de  Rivoli 
and  directly  across  from  the  Louvre.  Into  this  far  more 
commodious  building  was  moved  the  larger  portion  of  the 
American  Red  Cross  offices  in  Paris,  with  the  exception  of 
the  headquarters  of  the  northeastern  zone,  which  remained 
for  a  little  longer  time  at  No.  4  Place  de  la  Concorde. 
Upon  the  signing  of  the  armistice  and  the  appointment  of 
the  American  Commission  to  Negotiate  Peace,  the  United 
States  government,  through  the  French,  requisitioned  both 
No.  4  Place  de  la  Concorde  and  the  Hotel  Crillon  for  its 
peace  headquarters.  The  headquarters  of  the  northeastern 
zone  of  the  Red  Cross,  much  smaller  with  the  coming  of 
peace,  were  moved  into  the  upper  floor  of  the  Hotel  Regina. 

In  the  meantime  there  were  many,  many  changes  in  the 
American  Red  Cross  in  France  other  than  those  of  mere 
location.  Major  Grayson  M.-P.  Murphy  resigned  as  head 
of  the  French  Commission  early  in  September,  1917,  leav- 


18      WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

ing  behind  him  a  record  for  expertness  and  efficiency  that 
has  never  been  beaten.  He  was,  in  reality,  merely  bor- 
rowed from  the  United  States  Army,  and  to  that  organiza- 
tion, which  then  stood  badly  in  need  of  both  expertness  and 
efficiency,  he  was  returned,  while  his  place  as  captain  of 
our  American  Eed  Cross  overseas  was  taken  by  one  of  his 
associates.  Major  James  H.  Perkins.  Later  this  Red  Cross 
chief  attained  the  army  rank  of  lieutenant  colonel ;  yet  with 
Perkins,  rank  did  not  count  so  very  much  at  the  best.  To 
most  of  his  fellow  workers  he  was  known  as  Major 
Perkins ;  yet,  to  many  of  them,  "  Jim  Perkins  "  was  the 
designation  given  to  this  much-loved  American  Red  Cross 
officer.  For  if  Major  Murphy  left  behind  him  a  splendid 
reputation  for  expertness  and  efficiency,  Major  James  H. 
Perkins  left  his  monument  in  Paris  in  the  great  affection 
which  he  gained  in  the  hearts  and  minds  of  each  of  his  as- 
sociates. He  won  the  love  and  respect  of  every  man  and 
woman  in  the  organization.  For  here  was  a  real  man;  a 
man  who,  if  you  please,  preferred  to  gain  loyalty  —  the 
quality  so  extremely  necessary  to  any  successful  organiza- 
tion, whether  of  war  time  or  of  peace  —  through  his  own 
personality,  his  kindliness,  and  his  fairness  rather  than  by 
the  authority  vested  in  his  office. 

"  It  is  impossible  to  exaggerate  the  whole-heartedness 
which  Major  Perkins  gave  to  the  upbuilding  of  our  work 
here  (France),"  wrote  Henry  P.  Davison,  chairman  of  the 
War  Council  of  the  Red  Cross  at  the  time  when  the  army, 
following  its  example  in  the  case  of  Major  Grayson  M-P. 
Murphy,  reached  out  and  demanded  Major  Perkins's  serv- 
ices for  itself.  He  continued: 

"  We  can  understand  the  appeal  that  the  army  service 
makes  to  him,  but  we  greatly  regret  the  loss  of  his  guidance 
and  association.  Whatever  we  have  accomplished  or  may 
accomplish,  it  must  never  be  forgotten  that  Major  Perkins 
and  Major  Murphy  were  the  pioneers  who  showed  the  way, 
who  interpreted  in  practical  fashion  the  desire  of  a  whole 


ORGANIZING  FOR  WORK  19 

nation  to  help  through  the  Red  Cross  in  the  greatest  cause 
to  which  a  people  ever  gave  their  hearts  and  their  resources. 
They,  and  we  who  carry  forward  the  work  of  the  Red  Cross, 
will  always  be  keenly  sensible  of  what  we  owe  to  the  energy, 
resourcefulness,  and  devotion  which  Major  Perkins  put 
into  the  task  of  developing  from  its  beginning  the  mission 
of  the  Red  Cross  in  the  war." 

And  while  I  am  quoting,  perhaps  I  can  do  no  better  than 
to  quote  from  a  report  of  Major  Perkins,  himself,  in  which 
he  summed  up  the  work  of  the  American  Red  Cross  after 
its  first  year  in  France.  He  wrote : 

"  It  is  impossible  for  any  one  who  has  not  had  the  ex- 
perience of  the  last  year  in  France  to  realize  the  difficulties 
which  stood  in  the  way  of  organizing  an  enormous  quasi 
business,  quasi  relief  organization ;  personnel  was  hard  to 
get  from  America,  supplies  were  hard  to  get,  transportation 
was  almost  impossible,  the  mail  service  was  bad  and  the 
telephone  service  was  worse ;  but  in  spite  of  all  these  trou- 
bles the  spirit  with  which  the  men  of  the  organization 
undertook  everything,  carried  things  through  in  the  most 
wonderful  manner." 

Spirit !  That  was  Major  Jim  Perkins.  His  was  a  rare 
spirit ;  and  the  Red  Cross  men  who  had  the  pleasure  and 
the  opportunity  of  working  under  and  with  him  will  testify 
as  to  that.  Spirit  was  one  of  the  big  things  that  made  this 
captain  of  the  Red  Cross  in  the  months  when  the  difficulties 
of  its  task  overseas  were  at  high-water  mark  carry  forward 
so  very  well  indeed.  Another  was  his  rare  breadth  of 
vision.  He,  himself,  still  loves  to  quote  an  old  French 
priest,  whose  parish  children  had  been  greatly  helped  by 
the  work  of  our  Red  Cross  among  them. 

"  The  American  Red  Cross  is  something  new  in  the 
world,"  once  wrote  this  venerable  cure.  "  Never  before 
has  any  nation  in  time  of  war  sought  to  organize  a  great 
body  to  bind  up  the  wounds  of  war,  not  only  of  its  own 
soldiers  but  of  the  soldiers  and  peoples  of  other  nations. 


20      WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

Never  before  has  so  great  a  humanitarian  work  been  under- 
taken or  the  idea  in  such  terms  conceived,  and  the  result 
will  be  greater  than  any  of  us  can  now  see." 

So  it  was  that  Major  Jim  Perkins  "  saw  big  "  —  much 
larger,  perhaps,  than  some  of  his  associates  at  the  time 
when  the  press  of  conflict  was  hard  upon  all  of  them. 
Some  of  these  might  have  thought  his  plans  large  or  even 
visionary ;  one  or  two  frankly  expressed  themselves  to  that 
effect.  Yet  these  were  the  very  men  who,  when  the  Per- 
kins ideas  came  into  use,  saw  that  they  did  not  overshoot 
the  mark. 

It  was  under  the  regime  of  this  Red  Cross  captain  that 
the  American  Red  Cross  established  a  service  to  the  French 
army  in  the  form  of  canteens,  hospitals,  supplies,  and 
money  donations  that  led  many  of  its  commanders  as  well 
as  several  prominent  French  statesmen  to  remark  that  its 
steps  along  these  lines  were  of  inestimable  value  in  main- 
taining the  morale  of  the  poilu  and  so  in  the  final  winning 
of  the  war.  In  later  chapters  of  this  book  we  shall  describe 
in  some  detail  the  first  canteen  efforts  of  our  Red  Cross  in 
France,  and  find  how  they  were  given  to  the  faithful  little 
men  whose  horizon  blue  uniform  has  come  to  designate 
tenacity  and  dogged  purpose. 

One  of  the  very  typical  actions  of  the  Military  Affairs 
Department  under  Major  Perkins  was  the  help  given  to 
General  Petain's  army,  which  had  suffered  acutely.  His 
assistance  came  at  a  time  which  rendered  it  of  double  value 
to  the  French  commander.  In  fact  that  was  a  trait  of  very 
real  genius  that  Major  Perkins  displayed  again  and  again 
throughout  his  management  of  the  Red  Cross  —  the  knack 
of  extending  the  aid  of  his  organization  at  a  time  when  its 
work  would  be  of  the  greatest  assistance  to  the  winning 
of  the  war.  In  fact,  it  was  upon  his  shoulders  that  there 
fell  the  task  of  directing  our  American  Red  Cross  in  meet- 
ing its  two  greatest  military  emergencies  —  the  great  Ger- 
man offensive  in  the  Somme  in  March,  1918,  and  the  bitter 
fighting  in  and  about  Chateau-Thierry  some  four  months 


ORGANIZING  FOE  WORK  21 

later.  The  official  records  of  both  the  French  and  the 
American  armies  teem  with  communications  of  commend- 
ation for  the  efforts  of  the  American  Red  Cross  on  those 
two  memorable  occasions. 

Once  in  stating  his  policy  in  regard  to  the  direction  of 
the  Eed  Cross  Department  of  Military  Affairs,  of  which 
he  had  been  chief  before  succeeding  Major  Murphy  as 
Commissioner  to  France,  Major  Perkins  laid  down  his 
fundamental  principles  of  work  quite  simply:  they  were 
merely  to  find  and  to  develop  the  quickest  and  most  effec- 
tive way  of  helping  the  soldiers  of  the  allied  armies,  and, 
particularly  in  the  case  of  the  United  States  Army,  to  put 
the  Red  Cross  at  the  full  service  of  every  individual  in  it, 
not  only  in  succoring  the  wounded  but  in  making  a  difficult 
life  as  comfortable  as  was  humanely  possible  for  the  well, 
and  to  perform  these  duties  in  the  most  economical  and 
effective  manner  possible. 

Here  was  a  platform  broad  and  generous,  and,  with  the 
greatest  armies  that  the  world  in  all  its  long  centuries  of 
fighting  has  ever  known,  affording  opportunities  so  vast 
as  to  be  practically  limitless.  One  might  have  thought 
that  in  a  war  carried  forward  on  so  unprecedented  and 
colossal  a  scale  that  the  Red  Cross  —  or,  for  that  matter, 
any  other  relief  organization  —  might  have  found  its  full- 
est opportunity  in  a  single  activity.  But  seemingly  that 
is  not  the  Red  Cross  way  of  doing  things.  And  in  this 
particular  war  its  great  and  dominating  American  organ- 
ization was  forever  seeking  out  opportunities  for  service 
far  removed  from  its  conventional  activities  of  the  past, 
and  of  the  things  that  originally  might  have  been  expected 
of  it.  Count  so  much  for  its  versatility. 

Consider,  for  instance,  its  activities  in  the  field  with  the 
American  Army  —  we  also  shall  consider  these  in  greater 
detail  farther  along  in  the  pages  of  this  book.  The  field 
service  of  the  Red  Cross  in  France  —  the  distribution  of 
such  homely  and  needed  man  creature  comforts  as  tobacco 
and  toilet  articles  to  the  troopers  in  the  trenches  or  close 


22      WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

behind  them  —  was  a  work  quite  removed  from  that  started 
by  women  such  as  Florence  Nightingale  or  Clara  Barton. 
But  who  shall  rise  to  say  that,  in  its  way,  it  was  not  nearly 
if  not  quite  as  essential  ? 

It  was  this  field  service  that  Major  Perkins  inaugurated, 
then  urged,  and,  in  its  earliest  phases,  personally  directed. 
In  addition  he  had  charge  of  the  first  developments  of  the 
canteen  or  outpost  services  at  the  front.  This  consisted  of 
the  establishment  of  more  or  less  permanent  stations  by  the 
Red  Cross  as  close  to  the  front-line  trenches  as  was  either 
practicable  or  permissible.  Open  both  day  and  night, 
these  outposts  took,  at  night  under  the  cover  of  darkness, 
hot  drinks  and  comforts  to  the  men  holding  the  trenches 
and  at  all  hours  took  care  of  them  as  they  came  and  went 
to  and  from  the  lines  of  advanced  fighting. 

When,  slowly  but  surely,  the  American  Army  began  to  be 
a  formidable  combat  force  in  France,  the  already  great 
problems  of  Major  Perkins  were  vastly  increased.  Up  to 
that  time  the  allied  soldiers  had  been  receiving  the  bulk 
of  the  assistance  of  our  Red  Cross.  Now  the  balance  of 
the  work  had  to  be  changed  and  its  preponderance  swung 
toward  our  own  army.  Yet  Perkins  did  not  forget  the 
grateful  words  and  looks  of  thanks  that  he  had  received  so 
many,  many  times  from  the  poilus  and  all  of  their 
capitaines. 

"  Not  less  for  the  French,  but  more  for  the  Americans," 
he  quietly  announced  as  his  policy. 

So  it  was  done,  and  so  continued.  The  sterling  quali- 
ties of  leadership  that  this  man  had  shown  from  the  first 
in  the  repeated  times  of  great  stress  and  emergency  stood 
him  in  good  stead.  He  already  had  instilled  into  the 
hearts  and  souls  of  the  men  and  women  who  worked  with 
him  that  consecration  of  purpose  and  enthusiasm  for  the 
work  in  hand  which  rendered  so  many  of  them,  under 
emergency,  supermen  and  superwomen.  I  have  myself  a 
high  regard  for  organization.  But  I  do  believe  that  or- 
ganization, without  the  promptings  of  the  human  heart  to 


ORGANIZING  FOR  WORK  23 

soften  as  well  as  to  direct  it,  is  as  nothing.  How  often 
have  we  heard  of  the  man  with  the  hundred-thousand- 
dollar  mind  and  the  two-cent  heart.  And  how  well  we  all 
know  the  fate  that  eventually  confronts  him. 

To  Harvey  D.  Gibson,  who  succeeded  him  as  Commis- 
sioner to  France  in  the  summer  of  1918,  Major  Perkins 
turned  over  an  organization  whose  heart  was  as  big  as  its 
mind,  and  then  wended  his  own  way  toward  the  army, 
where  he  repeated  so  many  of  his  successes  in  the  Eed 
Cross.  But,  as  we  have  said,  left  behind  him  in  this  last 
organization  enduring  memorials  of  great  affection. 

Eventually  there  came  other  big  chiefs  of  our  American 
Eed  Cross  in  France.  Colonel  Gibson  returned  to  the 
United  States  in  March,  1919,  with  the  satisfaction  of 
having  done  a  thorough  job  thoroughly.  He  was  suc- 
ceeded by  Colonel  George  H.  Burr,  as  big-hearted  and  as 
broad  in  vision  as  Perkins.  At  the  same  time  that  Burr 
came  to  the  seat  of  command  in  Paris,  Colonel  Robert  E. 
Olds,  whom  Gibson  had  brought  to  Paris,  became  Com- 
missioner for  Europe.  Between  Burr  and  Olds  there 
was  the  finest  sort  of  team-work.  The  period  in  which 
they  worked  was  far  from  an  easy  one.  With  the  armis- 
tice more  than  three  months  past,  with  the  constantly 
irritating  and  unsettling  effect  of  the  Peace  Conference 
upon  Paris  and  all  who  dwelt  within  her  stout  stone  walls, 
with  the  mad  rush  of  war  enthusiasts  to  get  back  to  the 
peace  days  in  the  homeland,  with  the  strain  and  overwork  of 
long  months  of  the  conflict  finally  telling  upon  both  bodies 
and  nerves,  the  necessity  of  maintaining  the  morale  of  the 
Red  Cross  itself,  to  say  nothing  of  the  men  it  served,  was 
urgent.  The  dramatic  phases  of  the  work  were  gone. 
So  was  the  glory.  There  remained  simply  the  huge 
problem  of  orderly  demobilization,  of  bringing  the  struct- 
ure down  to  its  original  dimensions.  A  job  much  more 
easily  said  than  done;  but  one  that  was  done  and  done 
very  well  indeed. 


24     WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

We  have  digressed  from  the  days  of  the  war.  Keturn 
once  again  to  them.  In  all  that  time  there  were  many, 
many  changes  in  our  American  Red  Cross  in  Paris  —  one 
might  fairly  say,  "  of  course."  Men  came  and  men  went 
and  plans  and  quarters  were  changed  with  a  fair  degree 
of  frequency.  But  far  more  men  —  women,  too  —  came 
than  went,  and  moving  days  and  plan  changings  grew 
farther  and  farther  apart;  for  here  was  a  definite  and 
consistent  planning  and  upbuilding  of  organization.  If 
there  is  any  one  material  thing  upon  which  we  Americans 
pride  ourselves  to-day  more  than  another  it  is  upon  our 
ability  to  upbuild  our  efficiency  through  organization. 
And  I  think  it  is  but  fair  to  say  if  it  had  not  been 
thoroughly  organized  much  of  the  effort  of  the  American 
Red  Cross  in  France  would  have  been  lost.  Commissions 
and  commissioners  might  come  and  commissions  and  com- 
missioners might  go,  but  the  plan  of  organization  stood, 
and  was  at  all  times  a  great  factor  in  the  success  of  the 
work  overseas. 

The  original  plan  of  organization  was  simple.  It  did 
not,  in  the  first  instance,  comprehend  more  than  a  Com- 
missioner for  Europe,  with  the  bare  possibility  of  other 
commissioners  being  appointed  for  the  separate  countries 
—  if  there  should  be  found  to  be  sufficient  need  for  them. 
With  the  Commissioner  for  Europe  was  to  be  directly  affil- 
iated an  advisory  council,  a  bureau  of  legal  advice  and  gen- 
eral policy,  and  various  administrative  bureaus  and  stand- 
ing committees.  The  chief  plan  of  the  organization,  how- 
ever, divided  the  work  of  the  American  Red  Cross  in 
Europe  into  two  great  divisions :  the  one  a  department  of 
civil  affairs,  which  would  undertake  relief  work  for  the 
civilian  population  of  France,  which  in  turn  embraced  the 
feeding,  housing,  and  education  of  refugees,  repatries,  re- 
formes,  and  mutiles,  reconstruction  and  rehabilitation  work 
in  the  devastated  districts,  and  both  direct  and  cooperative 
work  in  the  cure  and  prevention  of  tuberculosis;  and  the 


ORGANIZING  FOR  WORK  25 

other  the  department  of  military  affairs,  which  undertook, 
as  its  province,  military  hospitals,  diet  kitchens,  relief 
work  for  the  armies  of  the  Allies,  medical  and  surgical  and 
prisoners'  information  bureaus,  medical  research  and  nurs- 
ing and  hospital  supply  and  surgical  dressings  services, 
canteens,  rest  stations  and  infirmaries,  nurses'  homes,  mov- 
able kitchens,  and  the  relief  of  mutiles.  It  is  of  the  work 
of  this  latter  department  as  it  affected  the  boys  of  our  army 
in  France  that  this  book  is  written. 

Before  Major  Murphy,  the  first  American  Red  Cross 
Commissioner  to  France,  had  proceeded  very  far  with  his 
work,  he  found  that  he  would  have  further  to  divide  and 
subdivide  its  activities.  In  connection  with  his  deputy, 
Major  James  H.  Perkins,  he  held  several  conferences  with 
General  Pershing  who,  day  by  day,  was  becoming  better 
acquainted  with  the  situation  and  the  opportunities  it  of- 
fered. General  Pershing  stated  quite  frankly  that  in  all 
probability  it  would  be  many  months  before  his  army  would 
be  an  effective  fighting  force  and  that  the  Red  Cross  must, 
during  those  months,  carry  the  American  flag  in  Europe. 

The  first  organization  scheme  comprehended  several 
American  commissions  for  the  various  countries  in  the  zones 
of  military  activities,  each  independent  of  the  other,  but 
all  in  turn  reporting  to  the  Commissioner  for  Europe  at 
Paris,  who  was  responsible  only  to  the  War  Council  of  the 
Red  Cross  at  Washington.  As  a  matter  of  actual  and 
chronological  fact  the  Commission  to  Belgium  antedated  the 
coming  of  the  first  Red  Cross  party  to  France.  Long  be- 
fore even  that  stormy  and  historic  April  evening  when 
the  United  States  formally  declared  war  upon  the  Kaiser 
and  all  the  things  for  which  the  Kaiser  stood,  the  American 
Red  Cross  was  in  Europe,  helping  to  feed  and  clothe  and 
comfort  ravished  Belgium.  And  its  Commissioner  ranked 
only  second  in  importance  to  Herbert  C.  Hoover,  who 
was  in  entire  charge  of  the  situation  for  America. 

So,  with  its  activities  increasing,  the  Red  Cross  further 


26      WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

divided  its  work.  In  the  fall  of  1917,  Major  Perkins  be- 
came Commissioner  for  France  and  a  short  time  afterwards 
separate  commissioners  were  appointed  for  Great  Britain, 
for  Italy,  for  Switzerland,  for  Belgium,  and  for  other  coun- 
tries. And  these  in  turn  appointed  their  own  individual 
organizations,  complete  structures  erected  for  business  ef- 
ficiency and  to  get  a  big  job  done  quickly  and  well. 

All  this  sounds  simple,  but  it  was  not ;  for  it  is  one  thing 
to  accomplish  business  organization,  and  accomplish  it 
quickly,  here  at  home  in  a  land  which  has  barely  been 
touched  by  the  ravages  of  war  and  not  at  all  by  invasion, 
and  quite  another  to  set  up  such  a  structure  in  a  land  shell- 
shocked  and  nerve-racked  and  man-crippled  by  four  years 
of  war  and  actual  invasion.  Poor  France!  The  war 
smote  hard  upon  her.  By  the  time  that  the  Murphy  Com- 
mission reached  her  shores  she  had  even  abandoned  the 
smiling  mask  which  she  had  tried  to  carry  through  the 
earliest  months  of  the  conflict.  In  Paris  the  streets  were 
deserted.  By  day  one  might  see  an  omnibus,  or  might 
not.  Occasionally  an  ancient  taxi  carriage  drawn  by  an 
ancient  horse,  too  decrepit  for  service  of  any  sort  at  the 
front,  might  be  encountered.  By  night  the  scene  was 
dismal  indeed.  Few  street  lights  were  burning  —  there 
was  a  great  scarcity  of  coal  and  street  lights  meant  danger 
from  above,  from  the  marauding  raids  of  the  great  air- 
ships of  the  boche.  The  few  street  lamps  that  were  kept 
alight  as  a  matter  of  safety  and  great  necessity  had  their 
globes  smeared  with  thick  blue  paint  and  were  but  faint 
points  of  light  against  the  deep  blackness  of  the  night.  So 
that  when  the  glad  day  of  armistice  finally  came  and  the 
street  lights  blazed  forth  again  —  if  not  in  their  old-time 
brilliancy  at  least  in  a  comparative  one  —  Paris  referred 
to  the  hour  as  the  one  of  her  "  unbluing." 

The  difficulties  of  obtaining  materials,  even  such  simple 
office  materials  as  books  and  blanks  and  paper,  to  say  noth- 
ing of  typewriters  and  the  more  complicated  paraphernalia, 


ORGANIZING  FOR  WORK  27 

the  problem  of  service  of  every  sort  —  clerical,  steno- 
graphic, telephone,  repair  —  can  easily  be  imagined. 
There  were  times  when  to  an  ordinary  business  man  they 
would  have  seemed  insurmountable;  but  the  Ked  Cross  is 
not  an  ordinary  business  man.  It  moves  under  inspiration 
-  inspiration  and  the  need  of  the  moment.  And  so  it  does 
not  long  permit  difficulties,  either  usual  or  abnormal,  to 
block  its  path. 

To  reduce  all  of  this  to  organization  was  a  distinct  and 
difficult  problem.  Our  Eed  Cross  which  had  jumped  into 
the  French  civilian  and  military  situation  while  it  awaited 
the  coming  of  the  first  troops  from  America,  first  organized 
in  practically  the  only  way  that  it  was  possible  for  it  to 
organize.  It  found  men  in  big  jobs  —  some  of  those  very 
activities  that  we  found  more  or  less  correlated  in  the  work 
of  the  American  Eelief  Clearing  House  —  and  told  other 
men  to  take  other  big  jobs  and  work  them  out  in  their  own 
way. 

This  was  far  from  ideal  organization,  of  course.  It 
meant  much  duplication  and  overlapping  of  functional 
work  —  in  purchasing,  in  transportation,  personnel,  and 
the  like.  But  it  was  the  only  sort  of  organization  that  was 
possible  at  first,  and  for  a  considerable  time  afterward. 
By  the  fall  of  1917,  when  Commissioner  Perkins  had 
settled  down  to  the  details  of  his  big  new  job  and  was  ready 
to  take  up  the  reorganization  of  the  Red  Cross  activities  in 
France,  there  came  the  great  drive  of  the  Austrians  and 
the  Germans  against  the  Italian  front,  with  the  direct  re- 
sult that  the  American  Eed  Cross  organization  in  Paris  was 
called  upon  to  bend  every  effort  toward  rushing  whole  train- 
loads  of  workers  and  supplies  southward  toward  Italy. 
And  in  the  spring  of  1918  came  the  last  great  drive  of  the 
Germans  in  France  —  that  supreme  hour  when  disaster 
hung  in  the  very  air  and  the  fate  of  the  democracy  of  the 
world  wavered. 

Yet  the  first  half  of  1918  was  not  entirely  spun  into  his- 


28      WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

tory  before  the  Red  Cross  in  France  was  beginning  its 
reorganization.  The  third  Commissioner  for  France, 
Harvey  D.  Gibson,  had  been  appointed  and  by  June  was 
on  his  way  to  Paris.  One  of  the  first  of  the  huge  tasks 
that  awaited  him  —  for  it  then  seemed  as  if  the  war  was 
to  last  for  years  instead  of  but  four  or  five  months  longer 
—  was  this  very  problem  of  reorganization.  Without 
delay  he  set  upon  it,  and  with  the  help  of  his  Deputy  Com- 
missioner and  assistant,  George  Murnane,  evolved  an  en- 
tirely new  plan,  which  gave  far  larger  opportunities  for 
the  development  of  the  American  Red  Cross  in  France  and 
was,  in  fact,  so  simple  and  so  logical  in  its  workings  as  to 
become  the  permanent  scheme  of  organization. 

Let  me  emphasize  and  reiterate :  the  old  plan,  with  its 
two  great  separate  departments  of  military  and  civilan  af- 
fairs, was  not  only  not  essentially  a  bad  plan,  but  it  was 
the  only  plan  possible  with  the  conditions  of  great  stress 
and  strain  under  which  our  Red  Cross  began  its  operations 
in  France.  But  it  was  quickly  outgrown.  It  did  not  and 
could  not  measure  up  to  the  real  necessities  of  the  situation. 

"  The  double  program  of  the  Red  Cross,  under  two  large 
departments  of  military  and  civilian  affairs,"  wrote  Eliza- 
beth Shipley  Sergeant,  of  this  older  plan  in  The  New  Re- 
public, ".  .  .  followed  a  good  Red  Cross  tradition  and 
seemed  to  be  based  on  a  genuine  separation  of  the  problems 
involved.  The  great  crisis  in  France  a  year  ago  was  a 
civilian  crisis,  and  the  distinguished  American  business 
men  who  directed  the  Red  Cross  were  wise  enough  to  asso- 
ciate with  themselves  specialists  in  social  problems  and  to 
give  them  a  free  hand.  The  chiefs  of  the  military  bureau, 
some  of  whom,  like  the  doctors,  were  also  specialists,  had 
no  less  a  free  hand.  Indeed  the  situation  was  so  complex 
and  the  necessities  were  so  immediate  that  every  bureau 
chief  and  every  field  delegate  was  practically  told  to  go 
ahead  and  do  his  utmost.  The  result  was  great  vitality, 
great  enthusiasm,  genuine  accomplishment.  .  .  ." 

In  the  twelve  months  that  the  American  Red  Cross* 


ORGANIZING  FOR  WORK  29 

had  been  established  in  France  its  work  had  multiplied 
many,  many  times;  in  but  six  months  the  size  of  the 
American  Army  there  had  quadrupled,  and  the  end  was 
by  no  means  in  sight.  To  plan  an  organization  that 
would  measure  up  to  meet  such  vast  growth  and  meet  it 
adequately  was  no  child's  play. 

To  begin  with,  he  decided  that  the  great  functional  work- 
ings, such  as  those  of  which  we  have  just  spoken  —  trans- 
portation, supplies,  personnel,  construction,  and  the  like 
—  should  be  centralized  in  Paris  and  the  great  duplications 
and  overlappings  of  the  old  system  avoided.  This,  in  turn, 
thrust  far  too  great  responsibilities  and  far  too  much  de- 
tail upon  those  same  Paris  headquarters.  So  in  turn  he 
took  from  it  its  vast  overload  and  divided  the  organization 
into  nine  zones,  of  which  more  in  good  time.  If  these 
zone  organizations  had  been  situated  in  the  United  States 
instead  of  in  France  it  is  quite  possible  that  the  functional 
activities  might  have  been  very  largely  concentrated  at  their 
several  headquarters.  For  in  our  own  land  such  things  as 
personnel,  transportation,  supplies,  and  construction  could 
be  readily  obtained  at  headquarters  points  —  Boston,  New 
York,  Chicago,  New  Orleans,  or  San  Francisco,  for  in- 
stance. In  France  they  not  only  were  not  readily  obtain- 
albe,  but  rarely  obtainable  at  any  cost  or  any  trouble. 
Think  of  the  difficulties  of  obtaining  either  motor  trucks 
or  canteen  workers  which  confronted  the  zone  manager  at 
Neufchateau,  just  back  of  the  big  front  line !  It  was  well 
that  the  plan  of  organization  under  which  he  worked  pro- 
vided definitely  he  was  to  requisition  Paris  for  such  sup- 
plies —  human  or  material  —  and  that  in  turn  Paris  might 
draw  upon  the  great  resources  of  America. 

Such  in  brief  was  the  plan.  It  was  simplicity  itself ;  yet 
was  builded  to  measure  to  the  necessities  of  the  situation. 
And  so  it  did  measure  —  to  the  necessities  of  the  situation. 
Time  and  experience  proved  that;  also  they  proved  the 
value  of  central  bureaus,  but  did  not  segregate  them  as  be- 
fore under  the  separate  headings  of  Military  and  Civilian. 


30      WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

Instead  there  proved  necessary  seven  "  functional  depart- 
ments "  —  to  be  responsible  for  plans  and  programs  and 
instructions  for  carrying  on  the  work.  The  directors  of 
those  seven  departments  served  as  assistants  to  the  admin- 
istrative head  of  the  American  Red  Cross,  the  Commis- 
sioner to  France.  Considering  him  as  the  commander  in 
chief  and  his  seven  directors  as  his  staff  officers,  the  Red 
Cross  in  France  began  to  take  on  a  distinctly  military  form. 

The  seven  departments  were  as  follows: 
Department  of  Requirements :  Bureau  of  Supplies ;  Trans- 
portation ;  Personnel ;  Permits  and  Passes ;  Construc- 
tion; Manufacture. 

Medical  and  Surgical  Department:  Bureau  of  Hospital 
Administration;  Tuberculosis  and  Public  Health; 
Children's  Bureau ;  Reeducation  and  Reconstruction ; 
Nurses. 

Medical  Research  and  Intelligence  Department. 
Department  of  Army  and  Navy  Service :  Bureau  of  Can- 
teens ;  Home  and  Hospital  Service ;  Outpost  Service ; 
Army  Field  Service. 

Department  of  General  Relief:  Bureau  of  Refugees;  Sol- 
diers' Families ;  War  Orphans ;  Argiculture. 
Department  of  French  Hospitals. 
Department  of  Public  Information. 

So  much  for  the  general,  or  staff,  organization.  It 
covered,  of  course,  all  France.  Yet  for  practical  opera- 
tions France  was  divided  into  nine  great  geographical  zones 
which  in  turn  were  subdivided  into  districts.  Each  zone 
possessed  its  own  warehouses  and  supply  and  transportation 
organization,  and  in  each  the  entire  operating  organization 
came  under  a  single  head,  the  Zone  Manager,  whose  respon- 
sibility for  his  own  particular  area  was  similar  to  that  of 
the  Commissioner's  authority  for  all  France.  The  Zone 
Manager  had  on  his  staff  representatives  of  any  of  the  head- 
quarters departments  which  might  function  in  his  area. 

The  scheme  was  simple,  and  it  worked.  Correspondence 
was  free  between  headquarters  at  Paris  and  the  individual 


ORGANIZING  FOR  WORK  31 

workers  in  the  field,  but  copies  of  all  instructions  were  also 
sent  to  the  Zone  Managers  —  in  some  cases  to  district  man- 
agers also  —  so  that  they  might  be  properly  informed  and 
all  the  operations  coordinated. 

The  nine  zones  of  military  operations  with  their  head- 
quarters were  as  follows : 

Northern Havre 

Northwestern    Brest 

Western St.  Nazaire 

Southwestern Bordeaux 

Southern    Marseilles 

North  Intermediate Tours 

South  Intermediate Lyons 

Northeastern Paris 

Eastern Neufchateau 

Now  consider,  if  you  will,  the  workings  of  the  seven 
great  central  bureaus,  in  so  far  at  least  as  they  concern  the 
province  of  this  book.  The  scheme  for  the  Department  of 
Requirements,  as  you  may  see  from  the  table  that  I  have 
just  given,  included  not  only  the  Bureau  of  Supplies, 
Transportation,  Construction,  and  Manufacture  —  which 
we  will  consider  in  separate  chapters  —  and  Permits  and 
Passes,  but  a  section  of  General  Insurance,  to  be  re- 
sponsible for  all  insurance  matters  except  life  insurance 
for  Red  Cross  workers,  which  fell  within  the  province  of 
the  Bureau  of  Personnel.  The  Medical  and  Surgical  De- 
partment had  its  functions  definitely  outlined.  It  was 
stated  that  it  was  to  be  in  charge  of  all  the  medical  and 
surgical  problems  of  the  American  Red  Cross  in  France 
(except  those  specifically  assigned  to  the  Medical  Research 
and  Intelligence  Department)  ;  that  it  was  to  formulate 
policies  and  to  undertake  a  general  supervision  of  medical 
and  surgical  activities.  Moreover,  it  was  to  maintain  the 
necessary  contact  with  the  United  States  Army  and  Navy 
authorities,  so  that  the  Red  Cross  could  be  prepared  to  ren- 


32      WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

der  prompt  service  in  the  event  of  medical  or  surgical 
emergencies.  It  was  to  be  responsible  for  the  determina- 
tion of  all  medical  and  surgical  American  Eed  Cross  stand- 
ards; for  decisions  regarding  supplies  and  manufactures 
for  medical  and  surgical  purposes;  and  for  judgment  re- 
garding medical  requisition.  These  things  were  set  down 
with  great  exactness,  and  it  was  well  that  they  should  be ; 
for  the  position  of  the  Red  Cross  in  regard  to  the  med- 
ical departments  of  both  the  army  and  the  navy  has  ever 
been  a  delicate  as  well  as  an  intricate  and  helpful  one.  So 
it  was,  too,  that  it  was  determined  that  each  of  the  nine 
zone  organizations  should  include  a  Medical  and  Surgical 
Department  representative  who  should  report  to  the  Zone 
Manager  and  be  responsible  for  executing  for  him  all  the 
medical  and  surgical  instructions  received  from  headquar- 
ters as  well  as  for  the  study  and  development  of  medical 
and  surgical  opportunities  within  the  zone.  It  was  further 
set  down  that  this  zone  representative  should  be  in  charge 
of  Red  Cross  hospital  administration  within  its  territory 
and  should  direct  its  operations  at  the  American  Red  Cross 
hospitals,  dispensaries,  infirmaries,  convalescent  homes, 
and  all  similar  activities. 

The  work  of  the  Army  and  Navy  Department  also  was 
expanded  in  great  detail.  And,  inasmuch  as  all  of  its  work 
comes  so  closely  within  the  province  of  this  book,  I  shall 
follow  some  of  that  detail.  For  instance,  the  plan  of  its 
organization  set  down  not  only  the  Bureaus  of  Canteens, 
the  Home  and  Hospital  Service,  Outpost  Service  and  Army 
Field  Service,  but  also  laid  down  the  definite  plans  of 
action  to  be  followed  by  each  of  these  bureaus.  Starting 
with  the  first  of  them,  the  Bureau  of  Canteens  was  to  be 
responsible,  through  the  zone  organizations,  for  the  de- 
velopment of  this  service  —  always  so  dear  to  the  heart 
of  the  doughboy  —  throughout  all  France,  for  the  inspec- 
tion of  its  operations  including  reviews  of  its  operating 
costs  and  for  all  activities  regarding  plans  for  the  supplies, 
construction,  and  equipment  of  the  canteens.  The  Head- 


ORGANIZING  FOR  WORK  33 

quarters  Bureau  of  this  work  at  Paris  was  to  develop  in- 
structions and  formulate  policies  for  the  operation  of  these 
stations,  but  in  the  zones  their  actual  operation  was  to  fall 
under  the  jurisdiction  of  the  local  representatives  of  the 
Army  and  Navy  Department  who  in  turn,  of  course,  re- 
ported direct  to  the  Zone  Manager  controlling  supplies  and 
transportation  movement  in  and  out  of  the  district.  r~ 

The  Bureau  of  Home  and  Hospital  Service  was  divided 
into  three  sections  —  great  sections  because  of  the  vastness 
of  the  work  that  it  might  be  called  upon  to  perform  for  an 
army  of  two  million,  or  perhaps  even  four  million  men. 
These  were  the  Home  Communication  Section,  the  Home 
Service  Section,  and  the  Section  of  General  Service  at 
Military  Hospitals.  The  task  of  the  first  of  these  sections 
-  which  presently  we  shall  see  amplified  —  was  to  obtain 
and  transmit  to  the  United  States  or  to  authorized  army 
and  navy  officials  in  France  and  also  to  relatives  in  the 
United  States,  such  information  as  might  possibly  be  ob- 
tained in  regard  to  dead,  wounded,  missing,  or  prisoner 
American  soldiers  or  sailors.  It  was  to  be  supplemental  to 
and  not  in  duplication  of  the  service  of  the  quartermaster 
of  the  United  States  Army.  As  a  part  of  its  work  the 
section  was  to  render  aid  in  registering  and  photographing 
the  graves  of  our  soldiers  and  sailors. 

At  headquarters  in  Paris  the  work  of  the  Home  Com- 
munication Section  was  to  be  concerned  with  general  ex- 
ecutive direction,  the  determination  of  policies,  the  issuance 
of  instructions,  and  the  actual  transcribing  and  forwarding 
of  the  reports  to  America.  In  the  zones  its  activities  were 
brought  under  the  zone  Army  and  Navy  Bureau.  Its 
actual  work  was  planned  to  be  conducted  through  searchers 
in  the  field,  in  camps,  and  in  hospitals. 

The  Home  Service  work,  while  in  a  sense  similar  to  that 
of  the  Home  Communication  Section,  in  another  sense  was 
quite  the  reverse.  For  while  the  first  of  these  two  serv- 
ices concerned  itself  with  supplying  the  anxious  mother 
back  home  with  information  regarding  the  boy  from  whom 


34     WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

she  had  not  heard  for  so  long  a  time,  it  was  the  task  of  the 
Home  Service  also,  through  its  representatives  in  the  field, 
camps,  or  in  hospitals  (in  many  instances  the  selfsame 
representatives  as  those  of  the  Home  Communication)  so 
far  as  possible  to  relieve  the  anxieties  of  soldiers  regarding 
affairs  at  home. 

The  third  section  of  the  Home  and  Hospital  Service 
bore  the  rather  imposing  title  of  Section  of  General  Service 
at  Military  Hospitals.  Its  task  was  to  assist  in  furnishing 
medical  and  surgical  supplies  to  army  and  navy  hospitals 
in  accordance  with  the  plans  of  the  Medical  and  Surgical 
Department,  to  distribute  general  comforts  to  our  sick  and 
wounded,  to  erect  and  operate  recreation  huts  at  the  hos- 
pitals, and  even  to  develop  gardens  at  the  hospitals  for 
furnishing  fresh  vegetables  to  patients  —  a  part  of  the 
program  which,  because  of  the  sudden  ending  of  the  war, 
was  never  quite  realized.  Furthermore,  the  work  of  this 
Section  contemplated  the  operation  of  nurses'  homes  and 
huts.  All  of  these  activities  were  to  be  under  the  chief 
representative  at  the  hospital  whose  task  it  was  to  correlate 
and  direct  all  the  operations. 

Alongside  of  Home  and  Hospital  Service  in  the  army 
and  navy  stood  the  Bureaus  of  Outpost  Service  and  of 
Army  Field  Service.  In  the  plan  for  the  first  of  these, 
the  American  Eed  Cross  would  endeavor  to  maintain  at  as 
many  points  as  was  consistently  possible  outposts  at  which 
supplies  would  be  kept  and  comforts  and  necessities  dis- 
tributed to  men  in  the  line.  From  these  points,  as  well  as 
from  points  even  in  advance  of  their  locations,  emergency 
sustenance  and  comforts  were  to  be  given  men  at  advanced 
dressing  stations  and  at  every  other  point  along  the  front 
where  our  troops  might  actually  be  reached. 

In  the  Army  Field  Service,  the  American  Eed  Cross  was 
to  have,  with  each  army  division,  a  representative  to  co- 
operate with  the  Army  Medical  Corps  to  furnish  supple- 
mentary medical  and  surgical  supplies,  to  distribute  sup- 
plies and  comforts  to  troops,  to  perform  such  canteen  serv- 


ORGANIZING  FOR  WORK  35 

ice  as  was  possible  in  emergencies,  and  for  a  general  co- 
operation with  the  men  working  in  the  Home  Communica- 
tion and  the  Home  services. 

If  I  have  taken  much  of  your  time  with  the  rather 
lengthy  details  of  this  final  war-time  plan  of  organization 
of  the  American  Red  Cross  in  France,  it  is  because  one 
cannot  well  understand  the  results  of  a  great  machine  such 
as  it  became  —  with  more  than  six  thousand  uniformed 
workers  in  the  field,  the  hospitals,  the  canteens,  and  the 
headquarters  of  France  —  without  looking  a  little  bit  be- 
neath its  hoodings  and  its  coverings  and  seeing  something 
of  the  actual  working  of  its  mechanism. 

I  like,  myself,  to  think  first  of  the  Red  Cross  in  its  vast 
humanitarian  aspects ;  and  yet  the  business  side  of  the  great 
organization,  so  far  as  I  have  had  the  opportunity  of  seeing 
into  it,  has  fascinated  me.  To  go  behind  the  scenes  of  the 
greatest  helping  hand  of  all  time  and  there  see  system,  pre- 
cision, and  order,  is  a  mighty  privilege.  The  Headquarters 
building  of  the  American  Red  Cross  in  the  city  of  Wash- 
ington is  a  monumental  structure  —  an  architectural  tri- 
umph in  white  marble,  planned  as  a  great  and  enduring 
memorial  long  before  the  coming  of  the  war.  Even  in  the 
busiest  days  of  1918  its  beautiful  and  restful  exterior  gave 
little  evidence  of  the  whirl  of  industry  within  and  behind, 
for  far  to  the  rear  of  the  main  Headquarters  building,  de- 
signed, as  I  have  just  said,  with  no  immediate  thought  of 
war,  stretched  great,  plain  emergency  buildings,  each  a 
hive  of  offices  and  each  peopled  with  hundreds  of  clerks, 
with  desks  and  typewriters  and  telephones  —  all  in  co- 
ordination and  all  a  part  of  the  paraphernalia  that  goes  to 
the  making  of  the  cogs  and  wheels  and  shafts  and  cylinders 
of  the  great  modern  machine  of  business  of  to-day. 

Behind  this  building  there  were  many  other  such  head- 
quarters structures  —  buildings  here  and  there  across  the 
face  of  the  United  States  and  in  some  of  the  great  capitals 
of  Europe  —  Paris,  London,  Rome,  Geneva,  for  instance. 


36      WITH  THE  DOUGEBOY  IN  FRANCE 

Of  these,  none  more  important,  none  busier  than  the  head- 
quarters of  the  American  Red  Cross  in  France,  in  the  six- 
storied  Hotel  Eegina,  Paris,  in  its  turn  a  veritable  hive  of 
offices  and  peopled  with  more  clerks,  more  desks,  more  type- 
writers, more  telephones,  and  all  this  paraphernalia  co- 
ordinated, as  we  have  just  seen,  by  modern  and  detailed 
business  system. 

Again  behind  these  headquarters  buildings  still  others; 
concentration  warehouses  in  each  of  America's  forty-eight 
states,  to  say  nothing  of  her  Federal  capital;  warehouses 
at  ports  of  embarkation;  warehouses  at  ports  of  debark- 
ation; at  central  points  in  France,  and  points  behind  the 
firing  line;  huts,  canteens,  in  some  cases  entire  hospitals, 
motor  trucks,  camion ettes,  supplies  in  the  hundreds  of 
thousands  of  tons  to  go  from  the  warehouses  into  the 
camions  and  back  again  into  the  warehouses,  and  ten  thou- 
sand workers,  six  thousand  in  France  alone.  What  a 
mess  it  all  would  have  been  without  coordinated  system, 
definitely  laid  down  and  definitely  followed ! 

To  have  builded  such  a  machine,  to  have  laid  down  so 
huge  and  so  definite  a  plan  in  the  days  before  the  war 
would  seemingly  have  been  a  matter  of  long  years.  But 
we  now  know  that  the  Red  Cross  is  an  emergency  organ- 
ization. In  emergency  it  was  developed  —  not  in  years, 
but  in  months,  nay,  even  in  weeks. 

"  We  had  to  build  an  organization  —  and  operate  it  all 
the  time  that  we  were  building  it,"  one  of  the  Washington 
officers  of  the  organization  once  told  me.  "  We  had  to 
start  to  get  actual  materials  and  supplies  for  field  relief 
work  of  every  sort  at  the  very  hour  and  minute  that  we  were 
sending  our  first  working  commission  to  France  and  were 
struggling  to  get  a  competent  field  relief  organization.  In 
every  direction  raw  and  inexperienced  human  material  con- 
fronted us.  We  were  raw  and  inexperienced  ourselves. 
And  yet,  as  we  confronted  the  big  problem  and  turned  it 
over  between  us,  we  saw  light.  We  began  to  realize  certain 
definite  things.  We  realized,  for  instance,  that  when  we 


ORGANIZING  FOR  WORK  37 

needed  an  executive  to  supervise  the  turning  out  of  many 
hundreds  of  millions  of  hospital  dressings,  we  did  not,  after 
all,  need  a  nurse  or  a  doctor,  but  a  man  or  a  woman  who 
had  the  experience  or  the  technique  to  turn  out  dressings 
in  huge  quantities.  We  needed  an  executive.  We  found 
such  a  man  in  the  person  of  a  lumberman  out  in  the  Middle 
West.  We  brought  him  to  Washington  and  there  he  made 
good  on  the  job." 

These  experiences  were  paralleled  in  Paris  even  through 
the  exigencies  of  the  situation,  the  extreme  emergency 
which  at  all  times  confronted  our  Red  Cross  there,  until 
the  fateful  eleventh  hour  of  the  eleventh  day  of  the  eleventh 
month  of  1918  had  been  met  and  long  since  passed.  It 
therefore  was  not  always  possible  to  pick  executives  with 
such  care  and  discrimination  as  would  be  possible  in  the 
United  States;  in  fact  the  best  results  were  obtained 
by  the  more  or  less  firmly  fixed  method  of  finding 
the  personnel  here  —  generally  in  response  to  definite 
cable  requests  from  Paris  —  and  sending  it  to  France, 
but  not  always.  Occasionally  the  reverse  was  true. 
Men  already  overseas  were  thrust  quite  unexpectedly 
into  posts  of  great  trust  and  great  responsibility  — 
posts  requiring  broad  and  instant  initiative  —  and  in  those 
posts  developed  abilities  which  they,  themselves,  had  not 
realized  they  possessed. 

In  fact  it  is  worth  stating  that  the  zone  plan  of  organiza- 
tion contemplated  this  very  possibility,  and  so  gave  to  each 
Zone  Manager  great  autonomy  and  freedom  of  action.  In 
no  other  way  would  it  have  been  possible  to  obtain  imme- 
diate and  efficient  results,  particularly  in  a  war-beset  land 
where  communication  of  every  sort,  by  train,  by  motor  car, 
by  post,  by  telegraph,  and  by  telephone,  was  so  greatly 
overburdened.  The  very  autonomy  of  the  final  organiza- 
tion plan  was  largely  responsible  for  its  success.  It  was 
one  of  the  lubricants  which  made  the  big  business  machine 
of  the  American  Eed  Cross  in  France  function  so  well. 

Have  you  ever  stood  beside  a  fairly  complex  machine  — 


38      WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

a  linotype  or  a  silk  loom  or  a  paper  machine,  for  instance 
—  and  after  examining  its  intricacy  of  cams  and  cogs  and 
shafts,  wondered  how  it  turned  out  its  product  with  such 
precision  and  rapidity  ?  So  it  is  with  the  big  business  ma- 
chine of  the  American  Red  Cross.  You  might  stand  close 
to  any  one  of  its  many,  many  individual  activities  —  the 
sewing  room  of  a  chapter  house  here  in  the  United  States, 
a  base  hospital  behind  the  front  in  France,  a  transport 
receiving  its  medical  supplies  —  and  wonder  truly  at  the 
coordination  of  such  huge  activities ;  for  they  did  co- 
ordinate. The  big  machine  functioned,  and  as  a  rule  func- 
tioned very  well  indeed.  And  because  it  did  function  so 
very  well  the  largest  single  humanitarian  effort  in  the  his- 
tory of  the  world  was  carried  forward  to  success  with  a 
minimum  of  friction  and  loss  of  precious  energy. 

So  much,  if  you  please,  for  practical  business  methods  in 
an  international  emergency. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE   PROBLEM   OF    TRANSPORT 

TO  attempt  aid  or  comfort  to  a  fighting  army  six  hun- 
dred miles  inland  from  the  coast  without  adequate 
transportation  was  quite  out  of  the  question.  Transporta- 
tion, in  fact  and  in  truth,  was  the  lifeblood  of  the  Amer- 
ican Expeditionary  Forces  which  began  to  debark  at  the 
Atlantic  rim  of  France  before  the  summer  of  1917  was  well 
spent.  It  was  the  obvious  necessity  of  transportation  that 
made  it  necessary  for  the  War  Department  of  the  United 
States  to  plan  to  operate  an  American  railroad  system  of 
some  6,000  miles  of  line  —  all  told  about  equal  to  the 
length  of  the  Northern  Pacific  system  —  over  certain  desig- 
nated portions  of  the  several  French  railway  systems. 
Nothing  was  ever  more  true  than  the  now  trite  Napoleonic 
remark,  that  an  "  army  travels  on  its  stomach."  The  im- 
perial epigram  about  the  progress  of  an  army  meant  trans- 
portation, and  little  else. 

In  other  days  in  other  wars  the  transport  of  the  United 
States  was  in  the  completely  adequate  hands  of  its  Quarter- 
master General  and  its  Corps  of  Engineers.  But  in  those 
days  we  fought  our  wars  in  North  America.  The  idea  of 
an  army  of  two  million  men  —  perhaps  even  four  or  five 
million  —  fighting  nearly  four  thousand  miles  away  from 
the  homeland  was  quite  beyond  our  conception.  When 
that  remote  possibility  became  fact  the  necessities  of  our 
transport  multiplied  a  thousandfold.  They  swept  even 
beyond  the  capabilities  of  a  Quartermaster  General  and  a 
Chief  of  Engineers  who  found  their  abilities  sore-taxed 
in  many  other  directions  than  that  of  the  water,  the  rail, 
and  the  highway  movement  of  troops.  It  became  a  job 

39 


40      WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

for  railroad  men,  expert  railroad  men,  the  most  expert  rail- 
road men  in  the  world.  And  where  might  railroad  men 
be  found  more  expert  than  those  of  the  United  States  of 
America  ? 

Purposely  I  am  digressing  for  the  moment  from  the  Red 
Cross's  individual  problem  of  transport.  I  want  you  to  see 
for  an  instant  and  in  the  briefest  possible  fashion,  the 
United  States  Military  Railroad  in  France,  not  alone  be- 
cause it  must  form  the  real  and  permanent  background  of 
any  study  of  the  transportation  of  the  American  Red  Cross 
—  itself  a  structure  of  no  little  magnitude  —  but  also  be- 
cause in  turn  the  Red  Cross  was  able  to  render  a  large  de- 
gree of  real  service  to  the  railroad  workers  who  had  come 
far  overseas  from  Collingwood  or  Altoona  or  Kansas  City 
to  run  locomotives  or  operate  yards  or  unload  great  gray 
ships.  No  Red  Cross  canteens  have  been  of  larger  interest 
than  those  which  sprung  up  beside  the  tracks  at  Tours  or 
Grievres  or  Neuf chateau  or  St.  Nazaire  or  Bassens  —  all 
of  these  important  operating  points  along  the  lines  of  the 
United  States  Military  Railroad  in  France. 

To  run  this  Yankee  railroad  across  the  land  of  the  lily 
required,  as  already  I  have  intimated,  expert  railroad  men- 
tality. To  head  it  no  less  a  man  than  W.  W.  Atterbury, 
operating  vice-president  of  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad,  was 
chosen  and  given  the  rank  of  brigadier-general  in  charge  of 
the  rail  transport  of  the  S.  O.  S.,  as  the  doughboy  and  com- 
missioned officers  alike  have  come  to  know  the  Service  of 
Supplies  of  the  American  Expeditionary  Forces.  Around 
himself  General  Atterbury  assembled  a  group  of  practical 
railroaders,  men  whose  judgment  and  experience  long  since 
have  placed  them  in  the  front  rank  of  American  transporta- 
tion experts.  Among  these  were  Colonel  W.  J.  Wilgus, 
former  engineering  vice-president  of  the  New  York  Cen- 
tral system  and  the  man  who  had  made  the  first  studies  of 
the  necessities  and  the  possibilities  of  the  United  States 
Military  Railroad  in  France ;  Colonel  James  A.  McCrea, 
a  son  of  the  former  president  of  the  Pennsylvania  and  him- 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  TRANSPORT        41 

self  general  manager  of  the  Long  Island  Kailroad  at  the 
time  of  our  entrance  into  the  war ;  Colonel  F.  A.  Delano,  a 
one-time  president  of  the  Wabash,  who  left  a  commis- 
sionership  in  the  Federal  Reserve  Board  to  join  the  army, 
and  Colonel  G.  T.  Slade,  former  vice-president  of  the 
Northern  Pacific.  These  men  are  only  a  few  out  of  a 
fairly  lengthy  roster  of  our  Yankee  railroad  men  in 
France.  Yet  they  will  serve  to  indicate  the  type  of  per- 
sonnel which  operated  our  lines  in  France.  It  would  not 
be  fair  to  close  this  paragraph  without  a  reference  to  the 
patent  fact  that  the  high  quality  of  the  personnel  of  the 
official  staff  of  our  Yankee  railroad  overseas  was  fully  re- 
flected in  the  men  of  its  rank  and  file.  These,  too,  were 
of  the  highest  type  of  working  railroaders,  and  to  an  Amer- 
ican who  knows  anything  whatsoever  about  the  railroads 
of  his  homeland  and  the  men  who  work  upon  them,  more 
need  not  be  said. 

The  United  States  Military  Railroad  in  France,  it  should 
clearly  be  understood,  was  not  a  railroad  system  such  as  we 
build  in  America  by  patient  planning  and  toil  and  the 
actual  upturning  of  virgin  soil.  While  many  millions  of 
dollars  were  expended  in  its  construction,  it  was  not,  after 
all,  a  constructed  railroad.  In  any  legal  or  corporation 
sense  it  was  not  a  railroad  at  all.  It  was  in  fact  an  adap- 
tation of  certain  lines  —  side  lines  wherever  possible  —  of 
long-existent  French  railways.  To  best  grasp  it,  one  must 
first  understand  that  the  greater  part  of  French  rail  trans- 
portation is  divided  into  five  great  systems.  Four  of 
these  —  the  Nord,  the  Etat,  the  Paris-Lyons-Mediterranee, 
and  the  Orleans  —  shoot  many  of  their  main  stems  out 
from  the  heart  of  Paris,  as  the  spokes  of  a  wheel  extend 
out  from  its  hub.  These  spoke  lines,  if  I  may  be  permitted 
the  phrase,  long  since  were  greatly  overburdened  with 
the  traffic  which  arose  from  the  vast  army  operations  of 
the  French,  the  British,  and  the  Belgians.  The  problem 
was  to  make  the  French  railway  system  bear  upon  its 


42      WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

already  much-strained  back  the  additional  transport 
necessities  of  our  incoming  army  of  at  least  two  million 
men  within  the  first  twelve  months  of  its  actual  operations. 

Between  the  radiating  spoke  lines  of  the  French  railways 
leading  out  from  the  great  huh  of  the  wheel  at  Paris  is  a 
network  of  smaller  and  connecting  lines,  the  most  of  them 
single-tracked,  however.  The  whole  structure,  in  fact, 
greatly  resembles  a  huge  spider's  web;  far  more  so  than 
our  own  because  of  its  more  regular  outlines.  Colonel 
Wilgus  and  Colonel  William  Barclay  Parsons,  the  designer 
of  the  first  New  York  subway  system,  who  accompanied 
him  in  the  first  inspection  of  the  army  transportation 
problem  in  France,  quickly  recognized  this  spider's  web. 
And  a  little  inspection  showed  them  the  great  burden  that 
its  main  spokes  already  were  carrying;  convinced  them 
of  the  necessity  of  using  other  lines  for  the  traffic  of  the 
American  Army.  For  it  was  known  even  then  that  in 
addition  to  carrying  the  men  themselves  there  would  have 
to  be  some  50,000  tons  a  day  transported  an  average  dis- 
tance of  six  hundred  miles  for  an  army  of  two  million 
men. 

To  strike  across  the  spider's  web!  That  was  the  solu- 
tion of  the  problem.  Never  mind  if  most  of  those  cross- 
country connecting  lines  running  at  every  conceivable 
angle  to  the  main  spoke  lines  and  in  turn  bisecting  the 
greater  part  of  them,  were  for  the  most  part  single-tracked. 
Never  mind  if,  as  they  began  to  climb  the  hills  of  Eastern 
France  which  held  the  eastern  portions  of  the  battle  front 
• —  sectors  assigned  quite  largely  to  the  Americans  —  they 
attained  one  per  cent  grade  or  better.  In  the  valley  of 
the  Loire  where  a  good  part  of  our  military  rail  route 
would  be  located  there  is  the  easiest  and  steadiest  long- 
distance grade  in  all  France.  With  American  ingenuity 
and  American  labor  it  would  be  comparatively  easy  to 
double  track  the  single-track  lines  and  in  some  cases  even 
to  lower  the  gradients,  while,  for  that  matter,  the  ingenuity 
of  American  locomotive  builders  might  rise  quite  easily  to 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  TRANSPORT       43 

the  problem  of  producing  an  effective  locomotive  to  over- 
come these  one  per  cent  pulls. 

I  have  spoken  of  the  valley  of  the  Loire  because  almost 
from  the  beginning  it  was  chosen  as  the  location  of  the 
chief  main  routes  of  the  United  States  Military  Railroad 
in  France.  Necessity  dictated  that  location.  It  was  both 
logical  and  efficient  that  the  British  should  be  given  the 
great  Channel  ports  for  their  supply  service  of  men  and 
munitions.  Their  endeavors  so  crowded  Havre  and 
Boulogne  and  Dieppe  and  Calais. and  Cherbourg,  to  say 
nothing  of  the  rail  lines  which  serve  these  ancient  ports 
of  the  north  of  France,  that  they  were  out  of  the  question 
for  any  large  movement  of  American  forces,  although,  as 
we  shall  see  in  good  time,  much  Red  Cross  material,  par- 
ticularly in  the  early  stages  of  our  participation  in  the  war, 
did  come  through  Havre. 

The  more  distinctly  American  ports,  however,  were 
Brest,  St.  Nazaire,  La  Rochelle,  and  Bordeaux,  as  well  as 
the  rapidly  created  emergency  port  at  Bassens,  just  across 
the  Gironde  from  Bordeaux.  All  of  these  harbors  are 
on  the  west  coast  of  France  and  give  more  or  less  directly 
in  the  Atlantic  Ocean  itself.  With  the  possible  exception 
of  Bordeaux,  in  recent  years  they  have  been  rather  sadly 
neglected  ports.  That  no  longer  can  be  said,  however, 
for  within  a  space  of  time  to  be  measured  by  weeks  and 
months  rather  than  by  years,  they  have  become  worthy 
of  rank  with  the  most  efficient  harbors  of  the  world.  It 
was  necessity  that  made  them  so  —  the  supreme  necessity 
of  the  greatest  war  in  history.  So  does  the  black  cloud  of 
war  sometimes  have  its  silver  lining  of  permanent  achieve- 
ment. 

These  were  the  ports  that  became  the  starting  points  of 
the  two  main  stems  of  the  United  States  Military  Rail- 
road in  France.  Upon  the  great  docks  and  within  the 
huge  warehouses  that  sprang  up  seemingly  overnight  were 
placed  the  constantly  incoming  loads  of  men  and  mules  and 
horses  and  food  and  guns  and  camionettes  and  tents  and 


44     WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

five-ton  trucks  —  all  the  seemingly  endless  paraphernalia 
of  war.  And  from  those  docks  and  from  those  warehouses 
moved  at  all  hours  of  the  day  and  night  long  trains 
emptying  them  of  all  that  same  endless  paraphernalia 
of  war  and  in  the  same  good  order  as  that  in  which  it 
arrived.  And  these  trains  were  for  the  greater  part  of 
American-huilded  cars,  hauled  by  locomotives  from  the 
engine-building  shops  of  Philadelphia  or  Schenectady  or 
Dunkirk  and  all  operated  by  75,000  expert  railroaders, 
picked  and  culled  from  every  state  of  the  Union. 

I  shall  not  attempt  here  to  go  into  further  detail  of  the 
operation  of  our  military  railroad  in  France,  although  there 
is  hardly  a  detail  of  it  that  is  not  fascinating  in  the 
extreme.  It  is  enough  here  and  now  to  say  that  it  func- 
tioned ;  that  our  "  contemptible  army "  wiped  out  the 
Saint  Mihiel  salient  in  one  day,  and,  what  is  perhaps 
far  more  important,  there  were  comparatively  few  in- 
stances where  an  American  soldier  went  for  a  day  without 
his  three  good  meals.  If  I  were  an  artist  I  would  like  to 
paint  a  picture  for  the  beginning  of  this  chapter.  And 
because  it  was  for  a  book  of  Red  Cross  activities  primarily, 
the  painting  would  show  the  operations  of  the  United 
States  Army  Transport  on  land  and  water  as  a  huge 
motley  of  ships  and  trains  and  warehouses  and  cranes  in 
a  gray  monotone  in  the  background;  while  in  the  fore- 
ground in  gay  array  one  would  find  the  motor  trucks,  the 
camionettes,  and  the  touring  cars  of  the  Bed  Cross's  own 
transportation  department. 

To  that  department  we  now  have  come  fairly  and 
squarely.  And,  lest  you  should  be  tempted  to  dismiss  it 
with  a  wave  of  the  hand  and  a  shoulder  shrug,  let  me  ask 
if  you  have  been  a  woman  worker  for  the  Red  Cross  some- 
where in  our  own  beloved  country,  if  you  ever  have  given 
more  than  a  passing  thought  to  the  future  of  that  gauze 
bandage  that  you  made  so  deftly  and  so  quickly  and  so 
many,  many  times  ?  Did  you  ever  wonder  what  became  of 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  TRANSPORT        45 

the  sweater,  the  helmet,  or  the  wristlets  which  you  knitted 
with  such  patient  care  and  patriotic  fervor?  Or  that 
warm  and  woolen  gown  which  you  took  down  from  the 
closet  hook  with  such  a  real  sigh  of  self-denial  —  it  still 
was  so  pretty  and  so  new?  How  was  it  to  reach  some 
downhearted  refugee  of  France? 

It  is  comparatively  easy  to  visualize  the  movement  of 
the  munitions  of  war  across  the  three  thousand  miles  of 
Atlantic  and  six  hundred  miles  of  France  between  our 
northeastern  seaports  and  our  front  lines  of  battle  —  pow- 
der and  food  and  uniforms  and  even  aeroplanes  and  loco- 
motives in  giant  crates.  It  perhaps  is  not  quite  as  easy 
to  trace,  even  in  the  mind's  eye,  the  vast  passage  of  the 
steady  output  of  the  20,000,000  pairs  of  patriotic  hands 
from  America  to  the  boys  at  the  front.  It  is  a  vast  pic- 
ture ;  a  huge  canvas  upon  which  is  etched  at  first  many  fine 
streams  of  traffic,  gradually  converging;  forming  rivulets, 
then  rivers,  and  finally  a  single  mighty  river  which,  if  I 
may  continue  the  allegory  without  becoming  too  mixed 
in  my  metaphor,  is  carried  overseas  and  across  the  entire 
width  of  the  French  republic.  Sometimes  the  swift  course 
of  the  river  is  checked  for  a  time;  the  little  still-water 
pools  and  eddies  are  the  concentration  stations  and  ware- 
houses in  America;  and  the  other  pools  and  eddies  in 
France  are  where  the  precious  relief  supplies  are  held  for 
careful  and  equitable  distribution. 

To  the  streams  that  have  poured  out  of  the  homes  and 
the  Chapter  workrooms  that  have  supported  the  Red  Cross 
so  loyally  and  so  royally,  must  be  added  the  great  floods  of 
traffic,  of  purchased  raw  materials  and  supplies  of  every 
sort.  Some  of  these  last,  like  the  output  of  the  home 
workshops,  will  go  to  the  boys  at  the  front  practically 
unchanged.  But  a  considerable  quantity  will  be  filtered 
through  huge  Red  Cross  workshops  in  Paris  and  other 
European  cities,  yet  also  goes  forward  to  the  front-line 
trenches. 

It  is  well  enough  to  look  for  a  time  at  this  huge  problem 


46     WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

as  a  great  allegory  or  as  a  great  picture;  perhaps  as  one 
looks  upon  a  great  pageant.  It  has  been  a  good  deal  more 
than  that  to  the  men  who  have  had  to  be  responsible  for 
the  successful  working  out  of  the  problem.  Come  back 
behind  the  scenes  and  I  shall  try  to  show  you  the  project 
as  it  appears  to  these  men  —  a  thing  of  hard  realities  and 
seemingly  all  but  endless  labor. 

When  Grayson  M.-P.  Murphy  and  his  Commission 
made  the  preliminary  survey  trip  to  France  in  the  interests 
of  the  American  Red  Cross  in  June,  1917,  they  took  the 
man  who  was  to  solve  their  transportation  problem  right 
along  with  them.  He  was  and  still  is  Major  Osborne. 
There  have  been  changes  in  the  Red  Cross  personnel  since 
first  the  American  organization  took  up  its  big  part  of  the 
international  job  at  Paris.  Men  have  come  and  men  have 
gone.  Big  executives  —  five,  ten,  twenty-thousand-dollar- 
a-year  men  a  plenty  —  have  slammed  down  their  desks 
in  New  York  or  Pittsburgh  or  Chicago  or  San  Francisco 
and  have  given  six  months  or  a  year  willingly  and  gladly 
to  the  service  of  the  Red  Cross.  For  many  of  them  well 
past  the  army  age  it  seemingly  was  the  only  way  that 
they  could  keep  pace  with  their  boys  or  their  nephews  in 
khaki.  But  Osborne  did  not  measure  his  service  by 
months.  He  came  with  the  first  and  remained  on  the  job 
until  long  months  after  the  signing  of  the  armistice. 

I  wish  that  I  might  write  of  C.  G.  Osborne  as  some 
veteran  American  railroader  or  at  least  as  a  man  expe- 
rienced in  motor  truck  or  highway  transportation  of  some 
sort.  For  when  one  comes  to  measure  the  size  of  the  job 
and  the  way  that  he  measured  up  to  it,  it  seems  incredible 
that  he  has  not  had  large  transportation  experience  of 
some  sort.  Yet  when  the  truth  is  told  it  is  known  that 
Major  Osborne  is  a  college  man,  with  an  astounding  record 
as  an  athlete,  but  with  little  more  actual  traffic  experience 
than  falls  to  the  lot  of  any  average  business  man.  Per- 
haps, after  all,  that  was  just  as  well,  for  to  his  big  new 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  TRANSPORT       47 

job  he  not  only  brought  vigor  and  strength  but  a  freshness 
of  mind  that  made  him  see  it  in  all  the  breadth  of  its 
possibilities. 

There  were  eighteen  men  in  that  pioneer  survey  party  of 
the  American  Red  Cross  to  France.  Before  the  ship  had 
left  her  dock  in  New  York,  Osborne  was  on  his  big  new  job, 
wiring  the  American  Eelief  Clearing  House  in  Paris  — 
which  at  that  time  was  the  unified  agency  for  all  the  Ameri- 
can relief  work  of  every  sort  that  had  sprung  up  in  France 
since  the  war  began  in  August,  1914,  to  buy  six  touring 
cars  and  to  have  them  at  Paris  to  meet  the  party.  The 
American  Relief  Clearing  House  moved  quickly.  It  al- 
ready possessed  three  Renaults  —  good  cars  of  a  sort  well 
suited  to  the  hard  necessities  of  the  war-scarred  highroads 
of  France.  It  purchased  three  more  touring  cars  of  the 
same  general  type,  and  in  these  six  cars  the  American  Red 
Cross  took  its  first  real  look  at  the  field  into  which  it  was 
to  enter  —  the  field  in  which  it  was  destined  to  play  the 
greatest  role  in  all  of  its  eventful  career. 

The  Clearing  House,  it  should  be  understood  quite 
clearly,  was  not  at  any  time  a  war-relief  agency  upon  its 
own  account.  It  was,  as  its  name  indicates,  a  real  clearing 
house  or  central  station  for  a  number  of  American  relief 
organizations  who  came  to  the  aid  of  the  French  long  be- 
fore the  United  States  had  entered  the  war,  and  the  Ameri- 
can Red  Cross  was  privileged  legally  to  enter  into  the  relief 
work  in  connection  with  it.  It  received  goods  —  sweaters, 
socks,  medicines,  even  food  —  from  the  states  and  from 
England  and  distributed  them,  although  not  even  this  work 
was  undertaken  directly,  but  was  handled  through  transi- 
taires,  who  made  the  direct  distributions.  Because  of  the 
rather  limited  nature  of  its  work,  therefore,  it  needed  little 
actual  equipment.  In  June,  1917,  it  only  owned  eight 
touring  cars  and  three  trucks ;  and  all  of  these  were  pretty 
badly  shot  to  pieces  by  hard  service  and  by  lack  of  repairs. 
But  these  it  turned  over  to  the  Red  Cross  and  they  became 


48      WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

the  nucleus  of  the  American  Red  Cross  transportation 
organization  in  France. 

"  What  we  are  going  to  need  here,"  said  Major  Osborne 
to  his  fellows  before  he  had  been  on  the  new  job  a  fort- 
night, "  is  to  create  a  real  transportation  service  and  to 
build  it  up  from  the  bottom.  What  I  really  have  in  mind 
is  the  organization  of  something  like  one  of  our  express 
companies  back  in  the  United  States." 

If  you  know  anything  at  all  about  our  inland  transpor- 
tation system  in  America  you  must  realize  that  our  ex- 
press companies  —  one  of  our  most  distinctive  forms  of 
national  transportation,  by  the  way  —  although  closely  re- 
lated to  our  railroads  are  in  no  real  sense  a  part  of  them. 
For,  while  they  have  their  largest  functions  upon  railroad 
trains,  particularly  passenger  trains,  they  also  maintain  in 
all  the  towns  and  cities  that  they  serve  great  fleets  or  squa- 
drons of  horse-drawn  or  motor-drawn  trucks.  And  in  re- 
cent years  they  have  increased  their  carrying  functions 
from  the  small  parcels  for  which  they  originally  were  de- 
signed into  the  heaviest  types  of  freight.  I  have  known  a 
carload  of  steel  girders  to  move  from  New  York  to  New- 
ark, eight  miles  distant,  by  express. 

Osborne's  idea  of  the  Eed  Cross  Express  was  fundamen- 
tally sound,  and  perhaps  it  is  because  it  was  so  funda- 
mentally sound  that  it  has  been  so  very  successful,  although 
working  many  times  against  tremendous  odds.  He  rec- 
ognized from  the  first  that  it  would  be  foolish  to  use  Red 
Cross  motor  trucks  for  long-distance  hauls,  such  as  from 
Havre  to  Paris,  for  instance,  save  in  cases  of  great  emer- 
gency. The  railroad  service  of  France,  although  greatly 
hampered  and  handicapped  during  the  war,  was  at  no 
time  broken  down.  And  it  was  not  necessary,  as  in  Great 
Britain  and  in  the  United  States,  to  take  it  out  of  the 
hands  of  its  private  owners  and  place  it  under  direct  gov- 
ernment control. 

Osborne  realized  that  he  would  be  compelled  to  place 
his  chief  reliance  upon  the  French  railways.  The  United 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  TRANSPORT       49 

States  Military  Eailroad,  especially  at  the  outset,  was 
not  to  be  compared  in  value  with  that  of  the  the  main  stems 
of  the  French  systems,  particularly  those  which  radiate 
out  from  Paris.  So  he  made  immediate  arrangements 
with  the  French  Minister  of  Railways  for  the  transport 
of  Red  Cross  supplies  from  the  various  Atlantic  ports  to 
Paris  and  other  distributing  stations  as  well  as  right  up 
to  the  railheads  behind  the  lines  themselves.  And  the 
French  on  their  part  generously  and  immediately  gave  free 
transportation  to  all  Red  Cross  supplies,  as  well  as  to  all 
persons  bound  to  any  part  of  France  exclusively  on  Red 
Cross  work.  In  addition  arrangements  were  made  by 
which  the  Red  Cross  personnel  bound  on  vacation  leaves 
or  other  personal  errands  through  France  might  avail 
themselves  of  the  very  low  passenger  rates  heretofore  only 
granted  to  soldiers  in  uniform. 

With  his  plan  of  utilization  of  the  railroads  for  long- 
distance hauls  firmly  fixed,  Osborne  promptly  went  to 
work  to  organize  his  fleet  of  trucks  and  touring  cars  in  the 
various  cities  of  France  where  the  American  Red  Cross 
has  touched  with  its  activities.  That  meant  not  alone  the 
securing  of  sufficient  motor  cars  of  the  various  sorts  nec- 
essary to  the  situation,  but  of  garages  and  repair  facilities 
of  every  sort;  this  last  particularly  difficult  in  a  nation 
which  for  three  years  had  been  war-racked  and  hard  put 
to  it  to  meet  her  own  necessities  of  motor  transportation. 
But  from  a  beginning  of  three  trucks  and  eight  touring 
cars  from  the  American  Relief  Clearing  House,  whose 
activities  were  quickly  absorbed  by  the  Red  Cross,  a  mighty 
fleet  of  trucks  and  camions  and  camionettes  and  touring 
cars  slowly  was  assembled.  Before  Osborne  had  been  in 
France  a  month  he  had  purchased  at  Paris  fifty-five  size- 
able trucks,  twenty-five  of  which  had  been  unloaded  at 
Havre  and  which  had  been  destined  originally  for  an 
American  firm  in  France  and  another  thirty  which  were 
turned  over  by  the  French  Minister  of  Munitions.  The 


50      WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

entire  fifty-five  trucks  were  all  at  work  by  the  end  of  July, 
1917,  when  the  first  of  the  relief  supplies  from  America 
began  to  roll,  a  mighty  tidal  wave  into  France. 

On  November  11,  1918,  the  day  that  the  armistice  was 
signed  and  another  great  milestone  in  the  progress  of  the 
world  erected,  the  transport  department  of  the  American 
Red  Cross  in  France  possessed  a  mighty  fleet  of  1,285 
trucks  and  touring  cars,  moving  some  5,000  tons  of  sup- 
plies each  week.  The  greater  part  of  these  were  in  actual 
and  constant  service,  the  rest  being  held  in  its  great 
garages  and  shops  for  painting  and  repairs.  To  these 
shops  we  shall  come  in  good  time. 

I  would  not  have  you  think  of  the  transport  problem 
too  largely  as  a  problem  of  the  motor  truck,  however.  I 
should  prefer  to  have  you  see  another  picture;  this  one  a 
perspective  —  France  rolled  flat  before  your  eyes,  the 
blue  Atlantic  upon  one  side  and  the  mountainous  German 
frontier  upon  the  other.  Across  this  great  perspective  — 
call  it  a  map,  if  you  will  —  are  furrowed  many  fine  lines. 
The  spider  web  once  again!  Here  are  the  railways  radi- 
ating out,  like  spokes  of  the  wheel,  from  Paris.  Here  are 
the  mass  of  connecting  and  cross-country  lines.  And  here 
the  one  of  these  that  must  remain  impressed  upon  the  minds 
of  Americans  —  the  double  main  stem  of  the  United  States 
Military  Railroad  in  France  reaching  chiefly  from  the 
ports  of  Bordeaux  and  of  St.  Nazaire  with  fainter  but 
clear  defined  tendrils  from  La  Rochelle  and  Brest  as  well. 
And  if  the  eye  be  good  or  the  glass  half  strong  enough  one 
can  see  the  steady  line  of  American  transports  coming  to 
these  four  harbors  —  the  "  bridge  across  the  Atlantic  "  of 
which  our  magazine  writers  used  to  prate  so  glibly  but  a 
little  time  ago. 

As  I  write,  the  list  of  the  French  ports  at  which  the 
transport  department  of  the  Red  Cross  conducts  its  chief 
activities  is  before  me.  In  addition  to  the  four  which 
have  just  been  mentioned,  one  finds  Toulon  and  Marseilles, 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  TRANSPORT       51 

upon  the  Mediterranean:  Bassens,  La  Pallice,  Nantes, 
Havre,  Rouen,  Dunkirk  and  Calais.  Not  all  of  these  were 
American  ports.  Some  of  them  were  reserved  exclusively 
for  the  British.  But  they  were  all  ports  for  the  American 
Red  Cross,  which  frequently  found  it  necessary  or  advis- 
able to  huy  supplies,  raw  or  manufactured,  in  England. 

The  hulk  of  our  materials  came,  however,  to  the  Ameri- 
can ports ;  and  at  some  of  them  our  Red  Cross  maintained 
more  than  a  merely  sizable  organization.  At  least  at  six, 
it  had  a  captain,  thirty  or  forty  French  or  American 
helpers,  and  perhaps  from  seventy-five  to  a  hundred  boche 
prisoners  who  performed  the  hardest  of  the  actual  work 
upon  the  piers  and  within  the  warehouses.  There  was 
much  work  to  he  done.  The  plants  were  huge.  In  St. 
Nazaire,  for  instance,  the  Red  Cross  warehouse  alone 
could  hold  more  than  eight  thousand  cases  of  supplies  be- 
neath its  roof,  and  in  course  of  the  busiest  days  of  the  war, 
just  before  the  signing  of  the  armistice,  it  was  no  uncom- 
mon thing  for  this  great  warehouse  to  be  completely 
emptied  and  refilled  within  seven  days.  At  the  one  port 
of  St.  Nazaire  it  was  necessary  to  assign  six  large  trucks, 
and  yet  the  movement  of  Red  Cross  supplies  from  this 
great  port  was  exclusively  upon  the  trains  of  the  United 
States  Military  Railroad. 

As  fast  as  the  freight  came  pouring  out  from  the  holds 
of  the  ships  it  was  carted  into  the  warehouses,  where  it  was 
carefully  checked  and  a  receipt  sent  back  to  America, 
noting  any  shortages  or  overages.  Then  it  found  its  way 
to  the  trains.  If  it  was  to  an  American  train  the  process 
was  simple  enough;  merely  the  waybill  transaction  which 
is  so  familiar  to  every  American  business  man  who  ever 
has  had  freight  dealings  with  our  Yankee  railroads.  If  it 
went  upon  the  French  railways,  however,  either  in  carload 
or  less  than  carload  lots,  it  rode  upon  the  ordre  de  trans- 
port which,  although  issued  and  personally  signed  by  Major 
Osborne,  was  the  free  gift  of  the  French  Minister  of  Rail- 
ways. These  ordres  de  transport  differed  from  waybills 


52      WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

chiefly  in  the  fact  that  they  give  gross  weights  but  no 
listing  of  the  contents  of  the  cases.  This  last  was  accom- 
plished by  the  bordereaux,  which  was  purely  a  Ked  Cross 
document. 

The  work  of  the  port  manager  of  the  American  Red 
Cross  at  one  of  these  important  water  gates  of  France  was 
no  sinecure,  indeed.  Here  is  the  testimony  of  one  of  the 
ablest  of  them,  Mr.  J.  M.  Erwin,  who  was  in  charge  of 
its  terminal  transportation  work,  first  at  Le  Havre  and 
then  at  Nantes.  He  writes : 

"  In  my  branch  of  the  activities  I  have  performed  no 
heroisms.  I  have  not  rushed  out  in  the  middle  of  the 
night  to  carry  food  or  dressings  to  the  front  while  dodg- 
ing bombs  or  bullets,  but  I  have  crawled  out  of  bed  at  five 
o'clock  and  six  o'clock  in  the  morning  to  wade  through 
snow  and  mud  in  the  quays,  trying  to  boss  the  unloading  of 
Red  Cross  goods  from  a  ship  and  their  transshipment  to 
warehouse,  car,  or  canal  boat.  I  am  like  my  confreres 
of  other  seaports  in  France  —  I  haven't  had  a  chance  to 
expose  my  person  to  battle  dangers  —  nothing  more  than 
the  hazards  of  abnormal  movement  and  traffic,  tumbling 
cranes  and  falling  bales,  automobile  eccentricities,  climatic 
exposures,  and  a  few  similiar  trifles. 

"  I  have  had  my  trials  of  dealing  with  the  formalities  of 
war  departments,  likewise  with  their  machine-made  ex- 
actions, and  with  all  the  types  of  Monsieur  Le  Bureau, 
with  the  general  and  the  corporal,  with  the  teamsters  who 
arrive  late  —  or  not  at  all  —  with  the  auto  truck  which 
breaks  down,  with  the  loche  prisoner  gang  which  reports 
to  the  wrong  place  two  miles  away,  with  the  vermin  that 
steals  things  out  of  cracked  cases,  with  the  flivver  that  I 
can't  start,  with  the  navigation  colonel  who  before  the  war 
was  a  plain  clerk  who  wore  store  clothes,  with  the  railway 
station  master  who  can't  give  me  any  cars,  with  119  cases 
of  jam  that  are  '  busted '  and  must  be  repaired,  at  once, 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  TRANSPORT       53 

and  atop  of  all  this  the  rain  which  has  been  raining  for 
seven  weeks  and  won't  stop." 

The  tone  of  the  port  manager's  letter  suddenly  changes 
from  sarcasm  to  the  romance  of  his  big  job. 

"  If  a  bale  or  a  case  of  goods  could  talk,"  he  writes, 
"  and  tell  you  all  about  its  trip  from  Spokane,  Washing- 
ton, to  the  emergency  hospital  near  Chateau-Thierry,  its 
narrative  would  form  a  chain  story  of  freight  cars  and 
docks  and  stevedores,  somber  seclusion  in  a  deep  hold, 
tempests  and  submarines  alert,  the  clanking  of  chains  and 
the  creaking  of  slings,  shouts,  orders,  and  oaths,  hangings 
about  in  rain  and  snow,  nails  and  cords  yielding  under 
the  tension  of  rush  and  brutality,  voices  and  hands  of  inim- 
itable uber  alles  prisoner  teams,  lonesome  sleeps  in  dark 
warehouses,  gnawings  of  nocturnal  rats,  more  trips  to  the 
unknown,  petite  Vitesse  which  averages  five  miles  an  hour, 
and  —  finally  —  destination,  arrival,  identification,  appli- 
cation, and  appreciation.  The  voyage  and  itinerary  of  a 
case  of  goods  for  the  Red  Cross  compose  an  odyssey  and 
very  few  human  packages  ever  perform  displacements  so 
replete  with  incidents  and  interest." 

SucK  indeed  was  the  day's  work  of  the  port  manager's 
job.  He  was  master  of  transportation,  and  at  a  very 
vital  point  in  transportation.  No  matter  how  much  he 
might  be  assailed  by  questions  or  criticisms,  until  he  won- 
dered whether  he  really  is  a  bureau  of  information  or  one 
of  complaint,  he  never  forgot  that  transportation  was  his 
real  job,  which  brought  to  the  A,  B,  C,  of  human  endeavor, 
meant  that  he  must  see  that  the  Red  Cross  supplies  re- 
ceived at  his  port  were  properly  checked  and  without  delay 
shipped  to  their  destinations.  Paris  was  most  generally 
this  last. 

Put  yourself  back  into  those  stirring  days.  Suppose, 
if  you  will,  that  a  certain  definite  shipment  of  Red 
Cross  supplies  comes  into  the  headquarters  city  of  Paris, 


54      WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

either  from  Rouen  or  Le  Havre  or  Brest  or  St.  Nazaire. 
It  comes  through  without  great  delay  on  the  small  but 
seemingly  entirely  efficient  goods  cars  of  a  French  rail- 
way to  a  great  freight  "  quai "  or  warehouse,  set  aside 
for  the  exclusive  use  of  our  American  Red  Cross,  not  far 
from  the  busy  passenger  terminal  of  St.  Lazaire.  This 
huge  raised  platform,  some  six  hundred  feet  long  and 
fifty  feet  wide,  handles  some  eighty  per  cent  of  all  the 
Red  Cross  supplies  that  come  into  Paris  in  the  course  of 
the  average  month.  All  of  the  goods  that  come  to  this 
Parisian  freight  station  are  import  and  "  in  bond,"  and 
so  at  the  great  exit  gates  there  is  a  squad  of  customs 
guards  to  inspect  all  outbound  loads.  But,  again  through 
the  courtesy  of  the  French  Government,  all  Red  Cross 
supplies  are  permitted  to  pass  without  inspection.  Thus 
a  great  deal  of  time  is  saved  and  efficiency  gained. 

The  little  railway  goods  cars  with  the  Red  Cross  supplies 
pull  up  along  one  side  of  the  quai  platform,  while  upon 
the  other  side  stand  the  camions  or  trucks  to  carry  the 
supplies  down  into  Paris.  Occasionally  these  are  not 
destined  for  the  French  capital;  in  which  case  they  are 
quickly  transferred  and  reloaded  to  other  little  railway 
goods  cars,  and  destined  for  other  points  in  France.  For 
the  normal  handling  of  freight  upon  this  particular  Red 
Cross  quai  —  when,  for  instance,  two  or  more  ships  arrive 
within  a  day  of  one  another  —  the  number  of  handlers 
and  checkers  may  rise  quickly  to  eighty-five  or  a  hundred 
and  then  there  may  be  as  many  as  15,000  cases  of  supplies 
upon  the  platform  at  a  single  time.  The  men  employed 
are  mainly  French  soldiers  on  leave  or  already  demobil- 
ized, and  are  strong  and  dexterous  workers.  And  upon 
one  occasion  they  unloaded  ninety-two  closely  packed 
freight  cars  in  thirty-two  hours. 

In  the  course  of  an  average  war-time  month  this  Paris 
receiving  station  for  American  Red  Cross  supplies  would 
handle  anywhere  from  800  to  5,000  tons  of  cases  a  week, 
and  despite  the  great  weight  of  many  of  these  cases  —  their 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  TRANSPORT       55 

is  nothing  light,  for  instance,  in  either  medicines  or  sur- 
gical instruments  —  counts  even  the  higher  record  as  no 
extraordinary  feat. 

In  addition  to  being  a  receiving  station,  this  quai  per- 
formed steady  service  as  a  sorting  station  or  clearing 
house.  From  it  some  fifteen  warehouses  or  stores  depots 
in  and  about  Paris  received  their  supplies.  And  care  must 
be  taken  that  the  goods  for  each  of  these  warehouses  must 
go  forward  promptly  and  correctly.  The  need  for  this 
care  was  obvious.  It  would  be  as  senseless  to  send  sur- 
gical dressing  to  one  distribution  center  as  stoves  to  an- 
other. 

When  any  of  these  incoming  supplies  had  been  trans- 
ferred from  the  railway  quai  to  the  distribution  stations 
and  a  receipt  taken  for  them,  they  were  at  once  stricken 
from  the  records  of  the  transportation  department  until, 
in  response  to  a  subsequent  call,  they  were  transferred  out 
for  delivery,  either  to  the  consumer  or  to  another  storage 
point  in  an  outlying  region,  which  is  where  the  big  fleet 
of  Red  Cross  trucks  in  the  streets  of  Paris  began  to  fully 
function.  The  central  control  bureau,  to  which  was  dele- 
gated the  routine  but  important  work  of  the  control  of  this 
great  squadron  of  trucks,  also  had  charge  of  the  reception 
of  merchandise  arriving  at  the  Seine  landings  on  barges 
from  the  seaports  of  Rouen  or  Le  Havre.  For  one  must 
not  forget  that  in  France  the  inland  waterway  continues 
to  play  a  large  part  of  her  internal  transport.  Not  only 
are  her  canals  and  her  canalized  rivers  splendidly  main- 
tained, but  also  owing  quite  largely  to  her  comparatively 
mild  winters,  they  render  both  cheap  and  efficient  transpor- 
tation. And  the  Seine,  itself,  sometimes  brought  a  thou- 
sand tons  a  week  into  the  Red  Cross  at  Paris. 

Now  are  we  facing  squarely  the  problem  of  the  motor 
truck  in  Major  Osborne's  big  department.  I  think  that  it 
was  the  part  of  the  problem  that  has  given  him  the  greatest 
perplexity,  and  in  the  long  run  the  greatest  satisfaction. 


56      WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

For,  before  we  are  arrived  at  the  fullness  of  this  phase  of 
his  service,  please  consider  the  difficulties  under  which  his 
staff  and  himself  labored  from  the  beginning.  France 
was  at  war  for  fifty-two  months;  not  fighting  a  tedious 
and  tiring  war  in  some  distant  zone,  but  battling  against 
the  invasion  of  the  strongest  army  the  world  ever  has 
known  and  facing  the  almost  immediate  possibility  of 
national  collapse ;  which  meant  in  turn,  if  not  an  industrial 
chaos,  something  at  times  dangerously  near  to  it.  It  meant 
that  trucks,  which  the  Red  Cross  organization  had  pur- 
chased back  in  America  and  had  fought  to  find  cargo  space 
for  in  the  always  overcrowded  transports,  sometimes  were 
no  more  than  unloaded  before  the  army,  with  its  prior 
rights  and  necessities,  would  commandeer  them  for  its  own 
purposes.  It  meant  not  only  hard  roads,  with  the  dangers 
attendant  upon  worn-out  highway  surfaces  and  an  over- 
press  of  terrific  traffic,  to  say  nothing  of  the  real  war-time 
danger  of  a  bursting  shell  at  any  moment,  but  the  lack 
of  proper  garage  and  repair  facilities  to  undo  the  havoc 
that  these  wrought ;  which,  further  translated,  meant  added 
difficulties  not  only  in  getting  repair  parts  but  the  men 
properly  equipped  to  install  them. 

The  American  Red  Cross  in  France  had  at  all  times 
enough  expert  organization  genius  to  enable  it  to  organize 
its  motor  transport  service  upon  the  most  modern  lines  of 
standardization  and  efficiency.  It  lacked  one  thing,  how- 
ever —  time.  If  it  had  had  time  it  might  easily  have 
selected  one,  or  at  the  most,  two  or  three  types  of  motor 
trucks  or  camionettes  and  one  or  two  types  of  touring 
cars  and  so  greatly  cut  down  the  stock  of  repair  parts  and 
tires  necessary  to  keep  on  hand  at  all  times.  But  time  did 
not  permit  this  sort  of  thing.  Time  pressed  and  so  did 
the  Germans,  and  it  was  necessary  to  purchase  almost  any 
sort  of  truck  or  car  that  was  available  and  put  it  to  work 
without  delay. 

The  man  problem  was  quite  as  acute  as  that  of  the 
material.  Good  drivers  and  good  repair  men  were  alike 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  TRANSPORT       57 

hard  to  find  in  a  nation  that  was  all  but  exhausting  its 
man  power  in  the  desperate  effort  to  hold  back  the  invading 
host.  As  it  was,  many  of  the  workers  in  the  Red  Cross's 
transportation  department  were  discharged  soldiers.  A 
few  of  them  were  mutiles  —  men  who  had  suffered  per- 
manent and  terrible  injuries  in  the  defense  of  their  coun- 
try. And  a  wearer  of  the  Croix  de  Guerre  more  than  once 
drove  an  American  Red  Cross  car  or  blew  a  forge  at  one 
of  its  repair  garages.  The  man-power  question  was  at 
all  times  a  most  perplexing  one. 

I  have  mentioned  this  phase  of  the  problem  of  my  own 
accord.  Neither  Major  Osborne  nor  any  of  his  staff 
have  referred  to  it.  Yet  it  is  typical  of  the  many  difficult 
phases  of  the  big  transportation  problem  which  was  thrust 
upon  them  for  immediate  solution  —  and  which  was 
solved. 

To  get  some  real  idea  of  the  magnitude  of  this  transpor- 
tation problem,  come  back  with  me  for  a  day  into  the  Red 
Cross  garages  of  Paris.  We  shall  once  again,  as  in  war 
time,  have  to  start  in  the  early  morning,  not  alone  because 
of  the  many  plants  to  be  visited  but  also  because  we  want 
to  see  the  big  four-ton  and  five-ton  trucks  come  rolling  out 
of  the  great  Louis  Blanc  garage,  close  beside  the  Boule- 
vard de  la  Villette  at  the  easterly  edge  of  the  city.  As  its 
name  might  indicate  it  faces  the  ancient  street  of  Louis 
Blanc,  faces  it  and  morning  and  night  fills  it  with  its  en- 
ergy and  its  enterprise.  Fills  it  completely  and  never 
disorderly.  For  I  have  seen  it  in  the  early  morning 
disgorge  from  150  to  200  trucks  from  its  stone-paved 
courtyard  and  receive  them,  or  others,  back  at  night  with 
no  more  confusion  than  a  well-drilled  military  company 
would  show  in  leaving  its  barracks  or  an  armory. 

The  stone-paved  courtyard  itself  is  interesting.  It  is  a 
bit  of  old  Paris  —  the  yard  of  an  ancient  stable  where 
carters  coming  into  the  city  with  their  produce  from  the 
fat  farms  of  the  upper  Seine  Valley  or  the  Marne  might 


58      WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

rest  their  steeds  for  a  time.  The  old  structures  which 
look  down  upon  the  courtyard  have  done  so  for  two  or 
three  or  four  centuries  —  perhaps  even  longer.  The  only 
outward  evidence  of  modernity  about  the  place  is  its  steel- 
trussed  roof,  wide  of  span  and  set  high  aloft,  like  the  great 
train  shed  of  some  huge  railroad  station,  and  the  splendidly 
efficient  great  motor  trucks  themselves.  How  those  old 
carters  of  the  royalist  days  of  France  would  have  opened 
their  eyes  if  they  could  have  seen  a  five-ton  truck  of  to-day, 
American  built,  in  all  probability  the  output  of  some 
machine  shop  upon  or  near  the  shores  of  Lake  Erie.  They 
are  wonderful  machines  —  alert,  efficient,  reliable.  I  do 
not  wonder  that  when  one  of  our  motor-truck  manufactur- 
ers from  the  central  portion  of  the  United  States  visited 
the  Verdun  citadel  —  just  a  few  months  before  the  ending 
of  the  war  —  the  commandant  of  that  triumphant  fortress 
kissed  him  upon  the  cheeks  and  led  him  to  decorations 
and  a  state  banquet  in  his  apartments  sixty-five  feet  beneath 
the  surface  of  the  ground.  There  were  several  hundred 
of  the  manufacturer's  three-ton  camions  in  the  outer  court- 
yard of  the  fortress  and  it  only  took  a  slight  brushing 
away  of  the  dust  and  mud  to  show  that  they  had  been  on 
the  job,  in  faithfulness  and  strength,  since  1914. 

One  does  not,  under  ordinary  circumstances  at  least, 
have  to  brush  away  much  dust  and  mud  to  find  the  number 
plate  of  the  Red  Cross  car;  for  the  Red  Cross  follows  the 
method  of  the  American  and  the  British  armies  in  in- 
sisting upon  absolute  cleanliness  for  its  equipment.  One 
of  the  briskest  departments  in  the  huge  Louis  Blanc  ga 
rage  is  the  paint  shop,  and  the  evidences  of  its  energy  are 
constantly  in  sight  about  the  streets  of  Paris. 

The  energy  of  some  of  the  other  workshop  departments 
of  the  garage  are  perhaps  less  in  evidence  upon  the  streets, 
yet  if  these  departments  were  not  measuring  constantly  to 
the  fullness  of  their  possibilities  their  failure  would  be 
evident  to  any  one  —  in  constant  breakdowns  of  equip- 
ment. The  fact  that  the  trucks  and  touring  cars  alike 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  TRANSPORT       59 

have  had  so  few  complete  breakdowns,  despite  the  terribly 
difficult  operating  conditions,  shows  that  the  Red  Cross 
repair  shops  have  been  very  much  on  the  job  at  all  times. 

They  are  complete  shops.  In  them  it  is  possible  to  take 
a  huge  camion  completely  apart  even  to  removing  the 
engine  and  the  body  from  the  chassis  and  the  frame,  in 
order  that  cylinders  may  be  bored  anew,  piston  rings  re- 
fitted, and  bearings  entirely  renewed.  All  this  work  and 
more  has  been  done  under  emergency  in  less  than  three 
days. 

Close  beside  this  Red  Cross  truck  garage  in  the  Rue 
Louis  Blanc  is  a  hotel  for  the  two  or  three  hundred  workers 
and  drivers  employed  there.  It  is  small,  but  very  neat  and 
comfortable  and  homelike,  and  is  directly  managed  by  the 
Red  Cross.  It  gives  housing  facilities  in  a  portion  of 
Paris  where  it  is  not  easy  to  find  such.  And  the  long  hours 
of  the  chauffeurs  in  particular  render  it  highly  necessary 
that  they  have  living  accommodations  close  to  their  work. 

From  Louis  Blanc  we  cross  Paris  in  the  longest  direc- 
tion and  come  to  the  so-called  Buffalo  Park,  in  ISTeuilly, 
just  outside  the  gates  of  the  city.  Buffalo  Park  gains  its 
name  from  the  fact;  that  it  once  was  a  part  of  the  circus 
grounds  wherein  the  unforgetable  "  Buffalo  Bill "  was 
wont  to  disport  his  redskins  for  the  edification  and  eternal 
joy  of  Paris  youth.  To-day  it  is  a  simple  enough  in- 
closure,  fenced  in  a  high  green-painted  palisade,  ingen- 
iously fabricated  from  packing  cases  in  which  knocked- 
down  motor  cars  were  shipped  from  America  and  guarded 
by  a  Russian  wolfhound  who  answers  to  the  name  of 
"  E"ellie."  In  the  language  of  the  French,  "  Nellie  "  func- 
tions. And  functions,  like  most  of  her  sex,  awfully  well. 
She  respects  khaki ;  but  her  enthusiasm  and  lack  of  judg- 
ment in  regard  to  other  forms  of  male  habiliment  has  oc- 
casionally cost  the  Red  Cross  the  price  of  a  new  pair  of 
green  corduroy  trousers,  always  so  dear  to  the  heart  of  the 
peasant. 


60      WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

Within  the  green-painted  inclosure  of  Buffalo  Park 
there  stands  a  permanent,  especially  built,  fireproof  ware- 
house and  office  building,  and  at  all  times  from  175  to 
200  camionettes,  or  light  ton  or  ton  and  a  half  trucks. 
It  does  not  undertake  much  repair  work,  particularly  of  a 
heavy  nature,  but  its  great  warehouse  holds  hundreds 
upon  hundreds  of  tires  (the  variety  of  wheel  sizes  in  un- 
standardized  motor  equipment  is  appalling)  and  tens  of 
thousands  of  spare  and  repair  parts.  The  entire  big  plant 
is  lighted  by  its  own  electric  generating  plant.  A  big  four- 
cylinder  gasoline  engine,  taken  from  a  Yankee  truck  which 
had  its  back  hopelessly  broken  on  the  crowded  road  to 
Rheims,  and  bright  and  clean  and  efficient,  was  thus  put 
to  an  economic  and  essential  purpose. 

The  other  large  garage  and  repair  shop  of  the  Red 
Cross  transportation  department  in  Paris  is  situated  at  ~No. 
79  Rue  Langier,  close  to  the  plants  in  Neuilly,  yet  just 
within  the  fortifications.  It  was  the  first  garage  to  be 
chosen,  and  one  easily  can  see  why  Osborne  and  his  fellows 
rejoiced  over  its  selection ;  for  it  is  one  of  the  most  modern 
and  seemingly  one  of  the  most  efficient  buildings  that  I 
have  seen  in  Paris  —  three  stories  in  height  and  solidly 
framed  in  reenforced  concrete.  It  houses  each  night  some 
two  hundred  touring  cars  and  has  complete  shops  for  the 
maintenance  and  repair  of  this  great  squadron  of  auto- 
mobiles. 

Up  to  the  present  moment  I  have  only  touched  upon 
the  use  of  touring  cars  for  the  American  Red  Cross  in 
France.  Yet  I  should  like  to  venture  the  prediction 
that  without  these  cars,  the  greater  part  of  them  of  the 
simplest  sort,  our  work  over  there  would  have  lost  from 
thirty  to  forty  per  cent  of  its  effectiveness.  It  is  useless 
to  talk  of  train  service  in  a  land  where  passenger  train 
service  has  been  reduced  to  a  minimum  and  then  a  con- 
siderable distance  beyond.  Remember  that  the  few  pas- 
senger trains  that  remain  upon  the  French  railways  are 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  TRANSPORT       61 

fearfully  and  almost  indecently  crowded.  Folk  stand  in 
their  corridors  for  three  hundred  or  four  hundred  miles  at 
a  time.  For  a  Red  Cross  worker  bound  from  point  to 
point  to  be  forced  to  use  these  trains  constantly  in  the 
course  of  his  or  her  work  is  not  only  a  great  tax  upon  the 
endurance  but  a  fearful  waste  of  time. 

The  same  conditions  which  exist  in  the  outer  country 
are  reflected  in  Paris.  The  subway,  the  omnibus,  and  the 
trolley  systems  of  the  city  all  but  completely  broke  down 
in  the  final  years  of  the  war  when  man  power  depletion 
was  at  its  very  worst.  The  conditions  of  overcrowding 
upon  these  facilities  at  almost  any  hour  were  worse 
even  than  the  overcrowding  upon  the  transit  lines 
in  our  metropolitan  cities  in  the  heaviest  of  their 
rush  hours.  To  gain  a  real  efficiency,  therefore,  it 
became  absolutely  necessary  many  times  to  transport 
Red  Cross  workers,  when  on  business  bent,  in  tour- 
ing cars.  And  because  there  were  at  the  height  of 
the  work  some  six  thousand  of  these  folk  —  five  thousand 
in  Paris  alone  —  it  became  necessary  to  engage  the  serv- 
ices of  a  whole  fleet  of  touring  cars.  Some  seventy  tour- 
ing cars  were  assigned  to  the  Paris  district.  With  very 
few  exceptions  these  were  operated  on  a  strictly  taxicab 
basis,  with  the  Red  Cross  headquarters  in  the  Hotel  Regina 
as  an  operating  center.  Here,  at  the  door,  sat  a  chief  dis- 
patcher, who  upon  presentation  of  a  properly  filled  order, 
assigned  a  car;  and  assigned  it  and  its  fellows  in  the 
precise  order  in  which  they  arrived  at  that  central 
station.  It  was  all  simple  and  efficient  and  worked  ex- 
tremely well.  In  the  course  of  an  average  day  the  chief 
dispatcher  at  the  Regina  handled  from  eighty  to  one 
hundred  requests,  for  runs  lasting  from  twenty  minutes 
to  an  entire  day. 

In  the  latter  part  of  January,  1919,  I  saw  this  Trans- 
portation Department  bending  to  an  emergency,  and  bend- 
ing to  it  in  a  very  typical  American  fashion.  A  strike  of 
the  subway  employees  spreading  in  part  to  those  of  the 


62  WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

omnibuses  and  trolley  lines,  had  all  but  completely  crip- 
pled the  badly  broken-down  transportation  of  the  city. 
And  not  only  was  the  Red  Cross  being  greatly  hampered, 
but  the  personnel  was  being  put  to  inconvenience  and  dis- 
comfort that  was  not  at  all  compatible  with  the  Red  Cross 
idea  of  proper  treatment  of  its  workers. 

In  this  emergency  the  transportation  department  jumped 
in.  It  moved  up  to  the  front  door  of  the  Regina  on  the 
first  night  of  the  strike  a  whole  brigade  of  heavy  camions 
and  a  squad  of  omnibuses  such  as  it  uses  in  transferring 
officers  and  men  on  leave  between  the  railroad  terminals 
and  its  various  hotels  in  Paris.  These  were  quickly  but 
carefully  assigned  to  definite  routes  which  corresponded  in 
a  fashion  to  those  of  the  more  important  subway  routes. 
Huge  legible  placards  announced  the  destination  of  each 
of  the  buses  or  trucks  —  Porte  Maillot,  Denf  ert-Rochereau, 
Place  de  la  Bastille  —  as  the  various  instances  might  be. 
Definite  announcement  was  made  of  the  hours  at  which 
these  trucks  would  return  on  the  following  morning  to 
bring  the  workers  back  again.  The  strike  was  over  in 
two  days,  but  if  had  lasted  two  weeks  it  would  have  meant 
little  difference  to  the  Red  Cross  workers.  Their  organi- 
zation had  shown  itself  capable  of  taking  full  care  of  them. 

We  have  drifted  away,  mentally  at  least,  from  the  big 
touring-car  garage  at  No.  79  Rue  Langier.  Yet  before 
we  get  entirely  away  from  it  we  will  find  that  it  pays  us 
well  to  see  its  shops;  great,  complete  affairs  situated  in  a 
long  wing  which  runs  at  right  angles  to  the  main  structure, 
and  which  employ  at  almost  all  times  from  eighty  to  one 
hundred  mechanics  —  blacksmiths,  machinists,  painters, 
even  carpenters,  among  them.  French  and  American 
workmen  are  employed  together,  but  never  in  the  same 
squad.  That  would  be  an  achievement  not  easy  of  ac- 
complishment. 

"  How  do  the  two  kinds  of  workmen  mix  ? "  we  ask 


.§ 

-fj 

I 

o 


11 


l 


• 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  TRANSPORT        63 

the  young  Red  Cross  captain  in  charge  of  the  garage. 

He  does  not  hesitate  in  his  answer. 

"  The  French  are  the  more  thorough  workmen.  They 
are  slower,  hut  their  output  is  finer.  The  American  gains 
the  point  more  quickly  and  goes  at  it  to  achieve  his  end  in 
a  more  direct  fashion.  Each  is  good  in  his  own  way. 
And  each  realizes  the  strong  points  of  the  other." 

The  Rue  Langier  garage  keeps  complete  hooks  for  all 
four  of  the  Paris  Red  Cross  garages.  We  have  seen 
three  of  them  already,  and  inasmuch  as  the  lunch  hour 
approaches  will  prefer  visiting  the  motor  camp  at  Pare  du 
Prince,  just  outside  the  fortifications  and  close  to  the  Bois 
de  Boulogne,  used  chiefly  as  an  overflow  park  during  the 
stiffest  days  of  Red  Cross  activities.  But  in  addition  to 
this  it  does  other  things,  not  the  least  of  them  the  mainte- 
nance of  the  transportation  department's  own  post-office 
facilities  and  a  cluhroom  for  the  use  of  the  chauffeurs 
when  they  are  off  duty,  not  a  very  frequent  occurrence. 

"  Do  the  chauffeurs  ever  play  poker  ?  "  we  ask  Captain 
Conroy. 

He  assures  us  that  they  do  not. 

Also  poker  is  supposedly  interdicted  at  the  big  hotel 
which  Major  Osborne  has  established  for  the  officers  and 
men  of  his  department  out  in  Neuilly,  just  around  the 
corner  from  Buffalo  Park.  There  are  plenty  of  other 
amusements  to  be  found,  however  —  books,  games,  cigars, 
cigarettes,  a  phonograph,  and  a  remarkable  cage  of  rare 
Oriental  birds  which,  with  pretty  good  success,  at  times 
try  to  silence  the  phonograph. 

It  is  to  this  hotel  that  we  find  our  way  for  lunch  and, 
without  hesitation,  pronounce  our  meal  the  best  we  have 
had  in  Paris,  which  has  more  than  a  local  reputation  as 
a  capital  of  good  eating.  We  find  an  omelet  souffle  —  the 
first  to  greet  us  in  the  town  —  roast  turkey,  mashed 
potatoes,  Brussels  sprouts,  an  American  apple  pie,  bread 


64  WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

and  butter,  and  coffee  with  real  creamy  milk.  And  all  for 
three  francs !  It  is  unbelievable.  Our  hotel  charges  us 
six  francs  for  one  pear  —  and  an  uncooked  pear  at  that ! 

This  remarkable  hotel,  which  houses  about  two  hundred 
of  the  transportation  department  workers,  was  one  of 
Major  Osborne's  pet  projects.  It  more  than  earned  its 
modest  cost  in  the  promotion  of  the  morale,  and  hence  the 
efficiency,  of  his  department.  To  its  mess  table,  the  major 
himself  often  came.  Sometimes  he  brought  his  aid,  Cap- 
tain Hayes,  out  with  him.  Both  confessed  to  a  liking  for 
roast  turkey  and  omelet  souffle.  At  the  officers'  table  there 
was  almost  certain  to  be  Captain  Harry  Taintor,  a  distin- 
guished New  York  horseman,  then  at  Buffalo  Park  and 
gaining  experience  in  a  distinctly  different  form  of  high- 
way transportation ;  Captain  M.  D.  Brown,  also  of  Buffalo 
Park;  Captain  F.  D.  Ford,  over  from  Rue  Louis  Blanc, 
and  Captain  Conroy  from  Rue  Langier.  These  men  and 
many  others  came  to  the  hotel,  and  among  them  not  to 
be  forgotten  a  certain  splendid  physician  who  left  a  good 
practice  up  in  Minnesota  somewhere  to  come  to  Paris  and 
look  after  the  health  and  strength  of  the  transportation- 
department  personnel.  More  than  sixty  years  young,  no 
youngster  in  his  twenties  gave  more  freely  or  more  un- 
selfishly than  this  man.  He  was  always  at  the  service 
of  his  fellows  in  the  Neuilly  hotel. 

His  service  was  typical  of  the  entire  remarkable  morale 
organization  of  the  transportation  department.  It  was  the 
same  sort  of  service  that  Miss  Robinson,  the  capable  man- 
ager of  the  hotel,  forever  was  rendering,  that  the  little 
supply  shop  across  the  street  gave,  that  one  found  here  and 
there  everywhere  within  the  department ;  a  morale  organi- 
zation so  varied  and  so  complete  that  it  might  well  stand 
for  the  entire  American  Red  Cross  organization  in  France, 
and  yet  served  but  one  of  the  multifold  activities  of  that 
organization. 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  TRANSPORT       65 

Before  we  have  quite  left  the  more  purely  mechanical 
phases  of  the  transportation  department  —  and  lack  of 
space  or  time  will  forbid  my  showing  you  the  other  im- 
portant garage  facilities  in  the  outlying  cities  and  towns 
of  France  —  I  want  to  call  your  attention  to  one  impor- 
tant part  of  the  problem,  the  supplying  of  fuel  for  the 
many  hundreds  of  trucks  and  cars  which  the  Red  Cross 
operates  throughout  the  French  republic.  You  may  have 
noticed  at  Buffalo  Park  one  or  two  of  the  huge  7,500- 
gallon  trailer  trucks  used  to  bring  gasoline  from  the 
United  States  Army  oil  station  at  Juilly,  outside  of  Paris, 
to  the  Red  Cross  garages  within  the  city. 

In  the  months  of  its  greatest  activities,  the  Red  Cross 
in  France  used  an  average  of  25,000  gallons  of  gasoline. 
To  have  secured  and  transported  this  great  quantity  of 
oil  even  in  normal,  peaceful  years  would  have  been  a  real 
problem.  To  secure  it,  to  say  nothing  of  transporting  it, 
in  the  hard  years  toward  the  end  of  the  war,  was  a  sur- 
passing problem ;  for  gasoline  seemingly  was  the  most  pre- 
cious of  all  the  precious  things  in  France.  If  you  did  not 
believe  it,  all  you  had  to  do  was  to  ask  a  Paris  taxi  driver 
—  even  after  taxis  had  become  fairly  plentiful  once  again 
upon  the  streets  of  the  capital  —  to  take  you  to  distant 
Montmartre  or  Montparnasse  —  and  then  hear  him  curse 
Fate  and  lack  of  "  essence  "  in  his  fuel  reservoirs. 

But  the  Red  Cross,  thanks  to  the  French  and  American 
army  authorities  as  well  as  to  its  own  energies,  did  get  the 
"  essence."  How  it  did  it  at  times  is  a  secret  that  only 
Osborne  knows.  And  he  probably  never  will  tell. 

Remember,  if  you  will,  that  gasoline  was  the  vitalizing 
fluid  of  the  war ;  therefore,  in  France,  it  was  guarded  and 
conserved  with  a  miser's  care.  For  without  it  one  knew 
that  there  could  be  little  mobility  of  troops,  little  transport 
of  supplies  and  ammunition,  and  no  tanks  or  aeroplanes! 
Therefore  every  liter  of  it  which  came  into  France  had  to 
be  accounted  for.  And  in  the  years  of  fighting  the  private 


66      WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

motor  practically  disappeared.  Only  the  militarized  car 
remained  mobile  and  was  permitted  to  retain  access  to  the 
diminished  gasoline  stores  of  the  Eepublic. 

Throughout  the  entire  nation,  the  French  Army  estab- 
lished gasoline  supply  stations.  In  its  zones  of  special 
activity  the  American  Expeditionary  Forces  had  their  own 
great  stations  in  addition.  On  the  presentation  of  a  prop- 
erly signed  carnet  or  book  of  gas  tickets,  a  military  or 
Eed  Cross  driver  was  permitted  to  obtain  from  any  of 
these  depots  such  an  amount  of  gas  or  kerosene  or  lubri- 
cating oil  as  he  might  really  need.  The  carnet  slips  were 
in  triplicate,  so  that  three  records  might  be  kept  of  the 
dispensation.  ~No  money  was  paid  by  the  driver;  his 
slip  signed  and  delivered  to  the  depot  superintendent  was 
sufficient.  And  by  this  method  every  gallon  of  gas  so 
obtained  was  eventually  paid  for. 

The  basis  of  this  entire  plan  was  that  a  gallon  of  gaso- 
line, no  matter  where  it  might  be  obtained,  was  a  gallon 
of  gasoline  from  the  Allies'  supply  of  the  precious  fluid 
and  must  not  only  be  accounted  for  but  paid  for,  in  what- 
ever way  payment  might  be  required.  The  French  Gov- 
ernment preferred  to  be  paid  in  the  precious  fluid  itself, 
liter  for  liter,  as  the  Eed  Cross  purchased  it  from  the 
American  Army.  If  it  so  happened,  as  it  often  did  hap- 
pen, that  the  restitution  was  made  at  a  French  port, 
although  the  original  supply  was  drawn  at  depots  many 
miles  inland,  the  French  were  further  compensated  by 
the  payment  of  a  sum  to  represent  the  freight  charges  from 
that  port  to  the  distribution  centers  which  supplied  the 
depots.  But  for  all  the  gasoline  drawn  from  the  American 
Army  stores  cash  payment  was  made  by  the  Eed  Cross. 

To  insure  the  conservation  of  the  gas,  the  greatest  care 
was  used  in  choosing  the  men  and  women  —  for  when  we 
come  to  consider  in  detail  the  peculiarly  valuable  services 
rendered  by  the  women  personnel  of  the  Eed  Cross  in 
France,  we  shall  find  that  more  than  once  they  mounted 
the  driver's  seat  of  a  camion  or  touring  car  and  remained 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  TRANSPORT       67 

there  for  long  hours  at  a  time  —  for  drivers.  And  woe 
betide  the  man  or  woman  caught  wasting  "  essence."  For 
when  a  driver  left  any  of  the  garages  with  a  car  or 
camion  —  even  if  he  were  going  but  a  short  four  blocks  — 
he  carried  with  him  a  time-stamped  ordre  de  mission  indi- 
cating his  destination.  The  quantity  of  gasoline  either  in 
the  car's  tanks  or  in  the  spare  containers  also  was  carefully 
registered.  And  if  the  driver  should  be  discovered  to 
have  deviated  from  the  shortest  path  between  his  garage 
and  his  destination  he  was  called  upon  for  an  explanation. 
If  this  proved  unsatisfactory  he  was  warned  for  his  first 
offense;  for  the  next  he  went  to  a  punitive  period  on 
the  "  wash  rack  "  in  the  garage,  which  meant  that  from 
two  or  three  days  to  two  weeks  or  more  he  stepped  down 
from  the  driver's  seat  and  washed  the  dirty  cars  as  they 
came  in,  and  to  the  best  of  his  ability,  too.  If  discipline 
of  this  sort  was  found  ineffectual,  the  culprit,  being  mili- 
tarized as  a  member  of  the  American  Expeditionary  Forces, 
was  turned  over  to  the  provost  marshal  of  the  American 
Army  in  Paris  for  such  punishment  as  he  might  see  fit  to 
impose.  The  latter  might  extend  —  and  sometimes  did 
extend  —  to  deportation  to  America. 

So  far  we  have  not  even  touched  upon  the  dramatic 
phases  of  the  work  of  the  transportation  function  of  our 
Red  Cross.  Yet  do  not  for  one  moment  imagine  that  it 
lacked  these  a-plenty.  I  said  at  the  beginning  of  this 
chapter  that  the  trucks  and  camionettes  were  not  used 
for  long  hauls  —  ordinarily.  It  was  far  too  wasteful  and 
far  too  extravagant  transportation.  Yet,  extraordinarily, 
these  found  their  way  the  entire  length  and  breadth  of 
France.  It  might  not  be  efficient  or  economical  to  ship 
beds  and  bedding  in  trucks;  the  food  relief  afforded  by 
even  a  tightly  packed  five-ton  camion  was  almost  negligible 
save  in  a  very  great  crisis.  But  think  of  the  emergency 
possibilities  of  a  truckload  of  surgical  instruments  rolling 
up  to  the  battle  line,  or  of  five  tons  of  ether  finding  its  way 


68      WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

to  a  field  hospital  all  but  overwhelmed  by  the  inrush  of 
wounded  men.  These  were  functions  the  transportation 
department  could  and  did  perform,  and  performed  them 
so  well  as  to  merit  the  Croix  de  Guerre  more  than  once 
for  its  men. 

On  one  occasion,  in  particular,  the  drivers  of  a  fleet  of 
camions  stood  by  the  surgeons  of  a  big  field  hospital  as  they 
performed  operation  after  operation  —  each  a  trying 
mental  strain,  but  performed  apparently  with  no  more 
effort  than  the  simplest  of  mechanical  processes.  These 
boys  —  the  most  of  them  were  hardly  more  than  boys  — 
in  that  long  forty-eight-hour  trick  were  surgeons7  helpers. 
They  held  the  arms  and  legs  that  the  scalpel  severed  and 
in  the  passing  of  but  two  days  of  their  lives  ceased  to  be 
boys  and  became  case-hardened  men. 

How  shall  one  best  describe  the  really  magnificent  work 
of  the  Red  Cross's  efficient  Transportation  Department 
in  such  supreme  emergencies  as  the  last  great  drive  of  the 
Germans  upon  the  western  front ;  or  in  emergencies  slightly 
smaller  in  area  yet  vastly  important  in  the  role  they  played 
to  the  rest  of  the  war  —  such  as  the  fearful  explosion  in 
the  hand-grenade  depot  at  La  Courneuve,  just  outside  of 
Paris,  early  in  1918  ?  Of  the  work  of  the  Red  Cross  in 
detail  during  the  drive  we  have  yet  to  read  in  other  chap- 
ters of  this  volume.  For  three  days  after  the  La  Cour- 
neuve disaster  the  French  newspapers  printed  accounts  of 
the  American  Red  Cross  work  there,  and  every  editorial 
writer  in  Paris  paid  his  tribute  to  the  promptness  and 
courage  with  which  that  aid  was  given. 

This  explosion  shook  Paris,  and  the  country  roundabout 
for  many  miles,  at  a  little  before  two  o'clock  in  the  after- 
noon. The  force  of  the  shock  may  be  the  better  under- 
stood when  one  knows  that  it  broke  windows  more  than 
six  miles  distant  from  the  hand-grenade  depot.  The 
Parisians  thought  at  first  that  the  bodies  had  dared  a  day- 
light raid  upon  their  city,  but  a  great  yellowish-gray  cloud 
rising  like  a  mighty  column  of  smoke  to  the  north  quickly 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  TRANSPORT       69 

dispelled  that  notion.  Only  a  mighty  explosion  could  send 
such  a  beacon  toward  the  heavens. 

Major  Osborne  chanced  to  be  at  luncheon  at  the  moment 
of  the  explosion.  He  jumped  from  the  table  and  speeded 
to  the  main  garage  of  the  Eed  Cross  in  Paris  as  quickly 
as  the  nearest  taxicab  could  take  him ;  there  he  ordered  five 
ambulances  to  be  equipped  and  manned  and  held  for 
orders.  The  superintendent  of  the  motor  division  of  the 
service  also  had  seen  that  beacon,  and  he,  too,  had  driven 
at  top  speed  to  the  garage.  The  two  men,  with  the  aid 
of  that  beacon  and  a  good  map  of  the  environs  of  Paris 
together  with  their  knowledge  of  the  war  activities  around 
about  it,  decided  instantly  that  it  must  be  La  Courneuve 
that  was  the  scene  of  the  disaster,  and  without  hesitation 
ordered  the  ambulances  to  hurry  there. 

"  Hurry  "  to  an  ambulance  driver !  It  was  part  of  his 
gospel  and  his  creed.  In  fifteen  minutes  the  squad  was 
at  the  smoking  ruin,  and  the  Red  Cross,  as  usual,  was  the 
first  ready  to  render  help.  It  was  needed;  for  although 
the  death  list  was  comparatively  small  —  and  one  can  say 
"  Thank  God !  "  for  that  —  owing  to  the  fact  that  the  first 
of  three  thundering  detonations  had  given  the  workmen  a 
chance  to  run  for  their  lives,  practically  all  the  houses  in 
the  near  by  communities  had  been  shattered,  and  a  great 
many  folk  wounded  in  their  homes  by  falling  walls  and 
ceilings.  The  depot  was  ablaze  when  the  Red  Cross  am- 
bulances arrived,  and  from  the  center  of  the  conflagration 
came  the  incessant  bursting  of  grenades.  Although  pieces 
of  metal  were  flying  through  the  air  with  every  explosion, 
the  Red  Cross  workers  went  to  the  very  edge  of  the  fire, 
crawling  on  hands  and  knees  over  piles  of  hand  grenades 
in  search  of  the  wounded.  It  was  courage,  courage  of  the 
finest  sort ;  courage  —  I  may  say  —  of  the  Red  Cross  type. 

On  the  morning  of  the  twenty-second  day  of  March, 
1918,  Parisians  read  in  the  newspapers  that  came  with 
their  matutinal  coffee  that  the  long-heralded  and  much-ad- 


70      WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

vertised  German  drive  was  actually  beginning.  Major 
Osborne  and  his  fellows  saw  those  startling  headlines. 
Instead  of  wasting  time  upon  speculating  as  to  what  their 
final  significance  was  to  be,  they  interpreted  them  as  a 
direct  and  personal  call  to  duty.  Within  the  hour  they 
were  at  the  big  garage  in  the  Rue  Louis  Blanc,  realizing 
that  the  Transportation  Department  once  again  had  an 
opportunity  to  demonstrate  its  real  efficiency. 

The  drive  was  on ;  the  pathetic  and  tragic  seeming  defeat 
of  the  allied  forces  begun.  Retreat  meant  that  refugees 
would  soon  be  fleeing  from  the  newly  created  danger  areas, 
that  there  would  be  necessity  for  increased  medical  sup- 
plies for  the  rearward  hospitals,  and  a  vast  amount  of  in- 
cidental work  for  both  camions  and  men.  The  work  of  a 
transportation  function  in  war  is  by  no  means  limited  to 
armies  that  are  advancing  or  even  stationary. 

At  Louis  Blanc  orders  were  given  to  make  ready  a 
battery  of  trucks  at  once  to  take  on  emergency  supplies. 
Even  while  this  was  being  done,  a  mud-spattered  car  came 
in  from  the  danger  zone  with  the  news  that  important  out- 
lying towns  were  threatened  and  must  be  evacuated  at 
once,  that  thousands  of  refugees  already  were  falling  back, 
and  that  the  Eed  Cross  warehouses  must  be  stripped  in  or- 
der to  prevent  the  precious  stores  from  falling  into  the 
enemy's  hands.  Ten  minutes  later  the  telephone  brought 
even  more  sinister  news.  In  several  villages  close  to  the 
changing  front,  folk  had  been  without  food  for  twenty- 
four  hours.  Rations  must  go  forward  at  once.  Delay 
was  not  to  be  tolerated,  not  for  a  single  instant. 

Steadily  the  telephone  jangled.  Messengers  by  motor 
car  or  motor  cycle  came  in  to  the  transportation  headquar- 
ters. Major  Osborne  made  up  his  mind  quickly.  He  is 
not  of  the  sort  that  often  hesitates.  Within  a  half  hour 
he  was  on  his  way  toward  the  front  in  a  car  loaded  with 
as  many  spare  tires  and  tubes  and  gasoline  as  it  could 
possibly  carry,  and  headed  straight  for  the  little  village 
of  Roye.  At  first  it  was  possible  to  make  a  fair  degree  of 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  TRANSPORT       Tl 

speed ;  but  as  the  front  was  neared  the  roads  became  con- 
gested with  a  vast  traffic,  so  fearfully  congested  that  the 
men  in  the  relief  car  counted  it  as  speed  that  they  were 
able  to  make  the  seventy-five  miles  between  Paris  and  Rove 
in  an  even  three  hours.  Between  Montdidier  and  Roye 
the  highroads  were  all  but  impassable  because  of  the  press 
of  the  traffic  —  fleeing  townsfolk  and  the  movement  of 
troops  and  artillery. 

At  an  advanced  Red  Cross  post,  Osborne  began  to  get 
glimmerings  of  definite  information.  With  them  he  set 
his  course  toward  Noyon,  eleven  miles  to  the  southeast. 
There  was  another  Red  Cross  post  there  where  he  obtained 
full  enough  information  to  cause  him  to  turn  his  car 
squarely  around  and  begin  a  race  against  time  to  Paris. 
In  less  than  two  hours  he  was  in  his  biggest  garage  there, 
drawing  out  trucks,  giving  definite  orders,  and  beginning 
an  actual  and  well-thought-out  plan  of  relief.  The  story 
of  the  execution  of  that  plan  is  best  told  in  the  words 
of  the  man  who  carefully  supervised  its  details.  Said  he : 

"  There  were  six  big  trucks  in  the  convoy  that  I  took  up 
to  the  front.  We  left  Paris  at  midnight,  the  trucks  loaded 
down  with  food  and  medical  supplies  and  blankets.  Al- 
though there  was  a  great  deal  of  movement  on  the  roads, 
we  plugged  along  all  night  without  many  delays  and  at  five 
o'clock  in  the  morning  had  to  come  to  a  dead  stop.  Artil- 
lery, transport  camions,  soldiers,  and  refugees  blocked 
the  way.  We  couldn't  go  a  yard  farther.  Our  orders 

were  to  go  to  N with  the  supply  stuff,  but  we  couldn't 

have  done  it  without  an  aeroplane.  The  army  was  mov- 
ing, and  the  little  space  that  it  left  in  the  roadway  was 
occupied  by  the  refugees.  They  came  streaming  back 
in  every  sort  of  conveyance  or  on  foot,  pushing  their  be- 
longings in  barrows  and  handcarts.  Up  ahead  somewhere 
the  guns  were  drumming  in  a  long,  ceaseless  roll. 

"  As  it  was  impossible  to  carrry  out  the  original  orders, 

the  trucks  were  sent  by  crossroads  to  A ,  the  nearest 

important  point,  and  I  went  on  in  a  little,  light  car  to 


72      WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

"N ,  squeezing  my  way  down  the  long,  hurrying  line 

of  troops  and  transport.  When  I  reached  there,  the  rail- 
way station  was  under  shell  fire  and  all  about  it  were 
British  machine  guns  and  gunners  awaiting  the  Germans, 
who  were  even  then  on  the  outskirts  of  the  town.  The 
attack  was  being  made  in  force  and  it  was  only  a  matter 
of  a  few  more  hours  that  the  defenders  could  hope  to  hold 
out.  They  had  mined  all  the  bridges  over  the  Oise  and 
were  ready  to  blow  them  up  as  they  retreated. 

"  There  was  one  Red  Cross  warehouse  in  "N and 

when  I  ran  around  to  it  I  found  that,  very  properly,  the 
British  and  French  troops  had  helped  themselves  from  its 
stores.  It  was  lucky  they  did,  because  the  town  fell  into 
German  hands  that  evening. 

"  With  !N" off  the  map,  as  it  were,  I  speeded  back  to 

A ,  where  there  was  a  hospital  in  an  old  chateau.  In 

this  were  sixty  wounded  American  soldiers  and  about  two 
hundred  French.  There  were  two  American  Army  sur- 
geons and  a  few  French  and  English  nurses.  That  after- 
noon we  evacuated  the  Americans  from  the  hospital,  and 

made  them  all  comfortable  in  their  new  lodgment  at  C . 

After  that  we  drove  dack  to  A and  turned  in,  because 

we  looked  forward  to  a  hard  day.  But  at  two  o'clock  in 
the  morning  a  French  general  waked  me  up  with  the  an- 
nouncement that  the  Germans  were  advancing  and  that  the 
hospital  had  to  be  completely  evacuated  in  ten  minutes. 
He  made  it  very  clear  that  it  would  have  to  be  done  in  ten 
minutes,  otherwise  we'd  find  ourselves  in  No  Man's  Land. 
So  I  turned  the  men  out  and  we  went  to  work  in  the  dark. 
As  a  matter  of  fact  those  ten  minutes  stretched  from  two 
o'clock  until  a  little  after  six,  when  we  carried  out  the  last 
of  the  wounded.  Some  of  them  were  in  a  bad  way  and 
had  to  be  handled  very  slowly.  We  put  them  in  our 
camions  and  took  them  ten  kilometers  to  the  Oise  Canal, 
there  transferred  them  to  barges  and  thus  they  were  con- 
veyed to  Paris. 

"  That  left  the  hospital  with  only  two  American  Army 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  TRANSPORT       73 

surgeons,  the  Red  Cross  personnel,  and  a  French  Army 
chaplain.  The  American  surgeons  looked  ahout  the  place 
rather  lonesomely,  but  one  of  them  said  he  felt  that  some- 
thing was  going  to  happen  and  that  before  long  there  would 
be  plenty  of  work  for  everybody.  The  guns  thundering 
all  around  us  seemed  to  bear  him  out. 

"  And  he  made  no  mistake !  The  very  next  afternoon 
several  American  Army  ambulances  arrived  with  loads  of 
English  and  French  wounded.  They  had  been  hurried 
down  from  the  advanced  dressing  stations  and  a  large 
percentage  of  them  were  in  bad  shape.  Although  we 
made  only  a  handful  of  people,  we  hustled  about  and  got 
the  hospital  going  again  somehow  and  started  in  to  take 
care  of  the  wounded.  There  were  no  nurses  about  the 
place,  none  in  the  town,  because  the  civilians  had  been 
ordered  out,  so  the  drivers  of  the  Red  Cross  camions  offered 
their  services.  Two  or  three  of  them  had  been  ambulance 
men  at  the  front  and  knew  a  little  something  about  han- 
dling wounded,  but  there  wasn't  one  who  had  ever  been  a 
nurse!  And  the  stiff  part  of  it  was  so  many  of  the 
wounded  soldiers  brought  in  were  in  such  a  condition  that 
operation  without  delay  was  vital. 

"  When  everything  was  made  ready  the  two  American 
surgeons  started  operating.  They  began  at  7 : 30  o'clock  in 
the  evening  and  kept  at  it  steadily  until  3  o'clock  in  the 
morning.  We  —  I  say  i  we '  because  every  one  had  to 
do  his  bit  —  performed  seventeen  major  operations,  and 
every  last  one  was  successful!  There  wasn't  a  hitch  in 
spite  of  all  the  difficulties  of  the  job.  In  the  first  place 
only  one  set  of  instruments  had  been  left  behind.  These 
had  to  be  sterilized  by  pouring  alcohol  over  them  after 
they  had  been  used  for  one  operation  so  they'd  be  ready  for 
the  next.  There  wasn't  time  to  boil  them.  And  the  light 
by  which  the  surgeons  worked  was  furnished  by  six  can- 
dles stuck  with  their  own  wax  to  a  board.  I  held  the  board. 
As  the  surgeon  worked  I  moved  it  around  so  he  might 
have  the  most  light  on  the  probing  or  cutting  or  sewing,  or 


74      WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

whatever  it  was  he  had  to  do.  Three  of  the  operations 
were  trephining  the  skull.  Another  of  the  soldiers  had 
fifty-nine  pieces  of  shell  in  him,  and  every  one  of  these 
was  located  and  taken  out  hy  candlelight.  It  was  a  busy 
night!  One  lucky  part  of  the  business  was  that  at  mid- 
night another  American  Army  surgeon  arrived  and  relieved 
at  the  operating  table.  The  worst  part  of  it  was  that  the 
other  worked  so  steadily  that  he  knocked  out  most  of  the 
drivers  and  they  couldn't  give  any  help  at  all  after  a  while, 
so  that  at  last  there  were  only  two  of  us  left  to  bear  a 
hand. 

"  In  the  morning  we  succeeded  in  evacuating  the  hos- 
pital, taking  the  wounded  to  C ,  where  there  were 

ample  facilities.  And  as  soon  as  the  wounded  were  car- 
ried from  our  trucks  we  were  put  to  work  getting  out  of  the 
town  the  refugees  who  had  accumulated  there  for  several 
days.  Then  we  turned  to  moving  the  Red  Cross  stores. 

C was  under  air  raid  every  clear  night,  so  we  had  to 

sleep  in  the  cellar  of  its  great  chateau.  The  bombs  burst- 
ing all  about  the  place  made  sleep  almost  impossible. 

"  And  when  this  little  bit  of  work  was  ended,  the  last  of 
the  refugees  and  their  baggage  transported  to  a  neighbor- 
ing railroad  station,  word  came  the  Germans  had  dropped 

a  .240  on  a  train  at  R a  few  kilometers  away.  So 

we  hustled  two  camions  over  there  and  found  four  men 
killed  and  five  wounded.  We  packed  them  into  the  trucks 
and  brought  them  out,  delivering  the  wounded  to  the  hos- 
pital at  C .  For  two  or  three  days  we  were  busy  in 

that  neighborhood  taking  care  of  refugees,  because  they 
were  streaming  toward  the  haven  of  Paris  by  the  thou- 
sands. Now  and  then  we  would  get  a  call  to  go  to  such 
and  such  a  point  because  a  shell  had  killed  people,  or  be- 
cause stores  had  to  be  moved  to  more  secure  places.  On 
one  of  these  trips  we  met  two  men  of  an  English  lancers 
regiment  who  had  been  badly  wounded  and  had  ridden 
twenty  kilometers  in  search  of  a  base  hospital.  We  picked 
them  up,  as  this  was  one  of  our  many  appointed  tasks,  and 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  TRANSPORT        75 

took  them  to  C for  treatment.  They  did  not  know 

what  to  do  with  their  horses,  and  as  there  was  no  possibil- 
ity of  getting  food  for  them  every  day,  they  debated 
whether  to  shoot  them.  They  solved  the  problem  by  giving 
the  two  animals  to  me !  And  there  isn't  a  doubt  the  crea- 
tures would  have  turned  into  elephants  on  my  hands  if  I 
had  not  met  a  British  battery  on  the  road  the  next  day. 
I  offered  the  horses  to  the  commander  and  he  was  over- 
joyed. '  I've  lost  eight  horses  already/  he  explained,  and 
hitched  up  my  two  and  went  rumbling  off  with  his  guns. 

"  In  a  little  while  the  trucks  were  ordered  to  swing 

northward  to  S .  The  French  had  been  there,  but  had 

retreated  to  straighten  their  lines,  and  at  once  the  Germans 
began  to  shell  the  place.  This  eventually  drove  out  the 
entire  civilian  population.  It  then  became  such  a  hot 
corner  that  it  was  no  longer  a  billeting  area  for  troops,  and 
army  camions  were  not  allowed  to  pass  through  the  city. 
But  there  was  a  Red  Cross  staff  on  the  job  there,  and  as  it 
had  been  decided  that  no  civilian  relief  was  possible,  the 
only  task  was  to  get  out  the  staff  and  all  the  supplies  it 
would  be  possible  to  move  from  the  Red  Cross  warehouse. 

"  We  went  up  with  three  camions,  and  as  we  entered  the 
city  we  saw  three  big  German  sausage  observation  balloons 
watching  the  place  and  directing  the  gunfire.  The  boche 
guns  were  after  some  of  the  Aisne  bridges,  the  railway 
station,  or  a  big  supply  depot  in  the  city.  Within  a  short 
time  after  we  got  in,  the  shells  began  falling  all  around 
us.  The  savages  had  seen  us,  there  wasn't  any  doubt  of 
it.  There  had  been  no  shelling  of  this  place  since  the  battle 
of  the  Aisne  in  1915,  but  the  Germans  were  making  up  for 
that. 

"  The  Red  Cross  warehouse  was  in  the  chapel  of  the  big 
seminary  in  the  city,  and  while  we  were  at  work  getting 
things  out  and  loaded,  the  shells  from  the  ,240's  came 
screaming  in.  The  first  one  banged  its  way  through  a 
house  directly  across  the  street,  and  made  a  puff  of  dust 
of  it,  but  as  we  were  in  the  courtyard  of  the  seminary  we 


Y6      WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

were  protected  from  flying  pieces.  After  that,  at  three  and 
a  half  minute  intervals  by  the  watch,  the  firing  continued. 
The  second  shell  went  over  our  chapel  and  exploded  in  an 
orchard  fifty  yards  back  of  us.  It  showered  us  with  mud, 
and  a  small  piece  of  shell  scored  one  of  our  fellows  on  the 
cheek.  The  third  one  the  Germans  sent  over  landed 
directly  in  the  seminary  garden.  This  was  almost  a  bull's- 
eye,  so  far  as  we  were  concerned,  but  we  kept  at  it,  making 
trip  after  trip,  and  when  the  last  load  left  late  in  the  after- 
noon, we  had  taken  two  hundred  tons  of  precious  supplies 
out  of  that  warehouse  and  stored  them  several  kilometers 
away. 

"  The  last  place  on  our  list  was  hotter  than  any  of  the 
others,  because  the  Germans  were  constantly  changing  their 
ranges  and  shelling  everything  in  the  back  areas.  We 

went  to  the  little  town  of  M to  bring  out  a  Red  Cross 

unit  there  which  was  at  work  only  two  kilometers  in  the 
rear  of  the  French  lines.  We  had  no  difficulty  in  getting 
the  unit  out,  but  when  it  came  to  getting  the  supplies,  that 
was  a  different  matter.  We  went  up  there  with  three  cars 
and  tried  our  best,  but  the  shelling  was  too  severe  and  we 
were  ordered  to  come  away.  Nothing  could  have  lived 
in  that  town  the  day  we  tried  to  make  it. 

"  That's  the  little  story  of  a  week,  and  it  was  a  full  one. 
While  the  German  guns  were  hunting  out  the  important 
towns  the  French  batteries  were  thundering  back  at  them. 
And  it  seemed  that  everywhere  we  went  the  French  guns 
came  up,  planted  themselves,  and  went  into  action.  In  one 
town  two  .155's  were  towed  in  by  gigantic  tractors,  stopped 
beside  our  trucks,  and  as  soon  as  pits  could  be  dug,  began 
firing.  Each  gun  fired  four  shots  as  quickly  as  possible 
and  then  the  battery  limbered  up  to  the  tractors  and  went 
on  its  way.  I  asked  the  commander  why  he  didn't  stay, 
because  it  seemed  to  me  that  a  little  protection  wouldn't 
have  been  a  half  bad  thing  for  us.  He  replied  that  as  there 
was  no  camouflage  possible  in  that  town  the  guns  had  to 
be  got  away  before  they  were  spotted.  He  added  that  he 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  TRANSPORT       77 

was  going  on  to  the  next  town  to  fire  four  more  shots,  and 
then  to  still  another  one  for  the  same  purpose.  He  prom- 
ised to  come  back  to  our  little  town  soon,  but  I  thanked 
him  and  said,  '  Never  mind,  we'll  be  gone  by  that  time.' ' 

And  experience  such  as  this  was  typical ;  not  in  the  least 
unusual.  And  this,  please  remember,  was  the  narrative 
of  but  one  convoy;  there  were  four  others  in  that  same 
sector,  and  in  the  same  week,  that  had  similar  experiences. 
When  we  come  to  consider  the  Red  Cross  in  its  field  activ- 
ities with  our  army  we  shall  hear  other  stories  such  as 
this ;  for,  of  a  truth,  the  work  of  the  Transportation  Departs 
ment  is  eternally  intermeshed  and  interwoven  with  that  of 
American  Red  Cross  relief  service  of  every  sort  in  France. 
Without  transportation,  little  could  ever  have  been  done. 

While  convoys  and  relief  supplies  rushed  toward  the 
front,  refugees  found  their  way  back  from  it.  They  came 
into  Paris  at  the  rate  of  nearly  5,000  a  day  and  the  Ameri- 
can Red  Cross  was  a  large  factor  in  taking  care  of  them,  of 
course.  Their  arrival  at  the  railroad  stations  of  the  city 
gave  the  Transportation  Department  of  the  American  Red 
Cross  another  task.  All  day,  and  day  after  day,  its  camions 
took  food  supplies  to  these  terminals  and  afterward  gath- 
ered the  refugees  and  their  baggage  and  bore  them  to  other 
railroad  stations  and  to  the  trains  which  were  to  carry  them 
to  their  temporary  destination. 

"  It  was  a  busy  week,"  laconically  remarked  a  local  Red 
Cross  historian  at  that  time. 

These  were  but  the  beginnings  of  the  days  of  real  test 
of  Major  Osborne's  department.  For  be  it  recorded  that 
it  was  in  the  spring,  the  summer,  and  the  fall  of  1918  that 
the  rush  calls  for  Red  Cross  service  came  —  and  found 
its  Transportation  Department  ready.  We  were  just 
speaking  of  those  doleful  days  of  the  March  retreat,  when 
things  looked  red  and  gray  and  black  and  misty  before  the 
eyes  of  those  who  stood  for  the  salvation  of  the  democracy 
of  the  world.  We  spoke  in  drama,  now  let  us  translate 


78      WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

drama  into  cold  statistics;  understand  quite  fully  that  in 
the  first  thirty  days  of  that  March  retreat,  162  truckloads 
of  Red  Cross  supplies  and  materials  were  sent  out  on  less 
than  twelve  hours'  notice,  288  truckloads  and  material  on 
twenty-four  hours'  notice,  and  61  truckloads  on  forty- 
eight  hours'  notice;  511  loads  in  all.  At  one  time, 
35,000  front-line  parcels  were  sent  out  within  ten  days. 

And  while  these  supplies  were  going  out  from  head- 
quarters, fifteen  trucks  were  in  continuous  operation,  evac- 
uating the  wounded  along  the  routes  from  JSToyon,  Rive- 
court,  Resson,  and  Montdidier  to  Beauvais.  And  six  roll- 
ing kitchens,  operating  in  that  selfsame  territory,  supplied 
hot  food  to  the  troops,  which  is  typical  of  the  work  of  the 
Red  Cross  Transportation  Department  in  many  similar 
territories.  For  instance,  in  that  memorable  year,  in  the 
attack  on  Pierrefonds,  on  July  29,  word  was  received  that 
several  thousand  wounded  had  been  lying  on  the  ground  for 
two  days.  Twenty  fully  equipped  ambulances  went  out  at 
once  and  for  seven  days  worked  steadily  evacuating  the 
wounded,  and  all  the  while  under  constant  fire.  The  en- 
tire section  of  ambulances  went  into  service  on  seven  hours' 
notice. 

The  Twenty-seventh  Division  —  composed  almost  en- 
tirely of  former  members  of  the  New  York  National  Guard 
—  did  not  hesitate,  in  emergency,  to  call  upon  our  Red 
Cross.  Major  General  John  F.  O'Ryan  found  that  he 
was  about  to  go  into  action  and  that  less  than  fifty  per  cent 
of  his  army  ambulance  equipment  was  available.  He 
turned  to  the  Red  Cross.  Could  it  help  him  out  with 
ambulances?  Of  course  it  could.  That  was  part  of  its 
job  —  the  big  part,  if  you  please  —  helping  out  in  war 
emergencies.  Twenty  ambulances  were  immediately  sent 
out  from  Paris,  and  during  the  attacks  which  took  Le 
Catelet  and  Solenne,  operated  all  the  postes-de-secour  of 
the  Division. 

There  is  still  another  phase  of  the  Transportation  De- 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  TRANSPORT        79 

partment,  which  as  yet  we  have  not  even  touched  upon.  I 
am  referring  now  to  the  actual  aid  it  lent  the  army  with 
its  vehicles  from  time  to  time.  The  Army  War  Risk  In- 
surance Bureau,  for  instance,  would  not  have  been  able  to 
get  about  France  at  all  if  it  had  not  been  for  twenty  Red 
Cross  cars.  Its  chief,  Lieutenant  Colonel  Richard  Chol- 
monley-Jones,  so  testified  when  he  wrote  to  the  American 
Red  Cross  heads  in  Paris,  saying : 

".  .  .  I  desire  to  express  to  the  American  Red  Cross 
our  deep  appreciation  of  the  assistance  of  the  organization 
in  our  work.  By  furnishing  motor  transportation  you 
enabled  our  field  parties  to  reach  the  officers  and  enlisted 
men  of  the  Expeditionary  Forces,  to  place  before  them 
their  opportunities  under  the  War  Risk  Act.  Our  prob- 
lem was,  after  all,  a  question  of  transportation.  This  you 
solved  and  I  believe  that  in  doing  so  you  could  have  done 
no  greater  service,  for  you  assisted  in  thus  relieving  these 
men  of  anxiety  as  to  their  families  at  home." 

Nor  was  the  aid  of  our  Red  Cross  limited  to  the  men  of 
our  army.  It  so  happened  that  we  had  a  navy  overseas; 
and  it  was  a  real  navy  and  filled  with  very  real  boys  and 
men.  It,  too,  came  in  for  its  full  share  of  American  Red 
Cross  assistance.  In  fact,  one  of  the  larger  camps  of  its 
aviation  service  was  entirely  constructed  with  the  aid  of 
R,ed  Cross  transportation. 

At  another  time  must  be  told  the  story  of  the  work  of 
the  Transportation  Department  of  our  Red  Cross  in  great 
bombing  raids  and  cannonading  which  was  inflicted  upon 
Paris,  week  in  and  week  out  and  month  in  and  month 
out.  It  was  part  of  its  great  chapter  of  assistance  to  the 
war-shocked  population,  civil  and  military,  of  all  France. 
It  is  enough  to  say  here  and  now  that  the  problem  was 
met  with  the  same  promptness,  the  same  cheerfulness,  and 
the  same  efficiency  as  characterized  its  work  with  our  army 
and  our  navy.  This  huge  portion  of  our  Red  Cross  ma- 
chine in  France  functioned  —  and  functioned  thoroughly. 


CHAPTER  Y 

THE   AMERICAN   BED    CROSS    AS    A    DEPARTMENT   STORE 

FROM  the  Commissioner  in  Paris  came  this  cablegram : 
"  Get  us  six  of  the  biggest  circus  tents  that  you 
can." 

From  the  Washington  headquarters  was  flashed  this 
reply : 

"  Tents  are  on  their  way." 

For  the  Red  Cross  it  was  all  a  part  of  the  day's  work. 
When  Colonel  Harvey  D.  Gibson,  our  Red  Cross  Commis- 
sioner in  France  in  the  latter  half  of  1918,  found  that  the 
absolute  limit  for  storage  supplies  in  and  around  Paris  had 
been  reached  and  passed  and  that  it  would  be  several  weeks 
at  least  before  more  additional  warehouses  could  be  con- 
structed, his  practical  mind  went  at  once  to  circus  tents  to 
meet  the  emergency.  They  would  be  rain-proof,  sun-proof, 
frost-proof  as  well.  And  so,  turning  to  the  cable,  he  or- 
dered the  tents,  as  casually  as  he  might  have  asked  for 
10,000  sweaters  or  100,000  surgical  dressings,  and  received 
them  as  he  might  have  received  the  sweaters  or  the  dress- 
ings, without  an  hour  of  unnecessary  delay. 

When  we  first  came  to  consider  the  work  of  the  Trans- 
portation Department  of  the  American  Red  Cross  in 
France,  I  spoke  of  the  women  who,  with  patriotic  zeal 
directing  both  their  minds  and  their  deft,  quick  fingers, 
turned  out  the  sweaters,  the  wristlets,  the  knitted  helmets 
by  not  merely  the  tens,  but  by  the  hundreds  of  thousands. 
Their  capacity  —  the  united  capacity  of  a  land  of  some 
20,000,000  adult  women  workers  —  was  vast.  But  the 
necessity  was  even  more  vast.  And  while  the  proportion 
of  these  creature  comforts  which  were  handmade  and  indi- 
vidual grew  to  great  size,  there  also  were  vast  quantities  of 

80 


RED  CROSS  AS  A  DEPARTMENT  STORE    81 

these  things  and  others  which  were  purchased  from  manu- 
facturers and  in  quantities  which  not  only  compelled  these 
very  manufacturers  to  turn  over  the  entire  output  of  their 
plants  for  many  months  but  also  compelled  them  to  add 
to  their  factory  capacity.  And,  of  course,  there  were  many 
things  which  the  wives  and  mothers  and  sisters  and  sweet- 
hearts of  America,  with  all  their  loving  desires  and  keen 
capabilities,  could  not  produce.  Which  meant  that  our 
Red  Cross  in  France  must  have  purchasing  and  warehous- 
ing functions  —  like  big  business  of  almost  every  other 
sort. 

It  would  have  been  foolish  and  worse  than  foolish  to  have 
even  attempted  the  problem  without  organization.  That 
was  the  difficulty  of  the  well-meaning  American  relief  work 
which  was  launched  upon  French  soil  before  the  coming  of 
our  Red  Cross.  In  the  early  days  of  the  war  the  French 
ports  were  littered  with  boxes  of  relief  supplies  addressed 
"  The  American  Embassy,"  "  American  Chamber  of  Com- 
merce," "  French  Army,"  and  just  "  France."  People  did 
so  want  to  help,  and  so,  in  our  impulsive  American  way, 
sent  along  things  without  sending  any  notice  whatsoever  as 
to  whom  they  were  to  go.  One  of  the  big  reasons  for  the 
foundation  of  the  American  Relief  Clearing  House  was  to 
combat  this  very  tendency.  As  far  back  as  October,  1914, 
it  began  by  organizing  French  and  American  committees, 
obtaining  freedom  of  customs  for  relief  goods,  free  sea  and 
rail  freights,  and  finally,  by  organizing  the  War  Relief 
Clearing  House  in  New  York,  as  a  complementary  com- 
mittee for  systematic  collection  and  forwarding. 

Eventually  the  Clearing  House  brought  American 
donors  to  the  point  where  they  would  actually  mark  the 
contents  of  boxes,  but  there  was  always  great  waste  in  not 
passing  upon  the  serviceability  of  shipments  until  they  had 
reached  Paris  and  great  delay  in  having  to  pack  and  re-sort 
them  there.  The  secondhand  material  which  came  was  of 
fair  quality,  but  not  sufficient  in  quantity.  And  while 
people  here  in  the  United  States  were  always  willing  to 


82      WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

contribute  money  generously  they  seemed  disinclined  to 
have  goods  bought  outside  this  country.  The  result  was 
that  the  American  Relief  Clearing  House  in  Paris  never 
had  a  sufficient  accumulation  against  emergency.  At  the 
time  of  the  first  great  offensive  against  Verdun,  in  the 
spring  of  1916,  it  was  compelled  to  send  out  all  of  the 
supplies  which  it  held  and  to  appeal  to  the  United  States 
for  more  clothes,  food,  and  the  like,  which  meant  all  of  a 
six  weeks'  delay. 

Such  a  state  of  things  could  not  exist  in  our  Red  Cross 
work  there.  And  yet  the  problem  in  this  very  phase  that 
confronted  Major  Murphy  and  his  party  was  tremendous. 
The  Compagnie  Generale  Transatlantique  had  just  notified 
the  Clearing  House  that  it  could  no  longer  afford  to  supply 
free  space;  and  in  view  of  the  subsequent  shipping  situa- 
tion, the  heavy  torpedoing,  and  the  army  demand  for  ton- 
nage, it  is  considered  not  improbable  that  had  the  Clearing 
House  continued  it  would  have  had  to  give  up  handling 
anything  except  money.  Yet  in  spite  of  obstacles,  the  Red 
Cross  would  have  to  purchase  and  store  supplies  —  not  in 
the  quantities  that  the  Clearing  House  had  purchased  and 
stored  them,  but  in  far,  far  greater  number. 

Major  Murphy  met  the  problem  squarely,  as  was  his 
way.  He  cabled  to  America,  and  seven  men  were  sent  to 
him  late  in  September,  1917.  They  were  men  taken  from 
various  corners  of  the  country,  but  all  of  them  expert  in 
the  task  allotted  to  them.  At  once  they  began  the  work  of 
coordinating  the  vast  problem  of  American  Red  Cross  pur- 
chase and  supply.  There  was  large  need  for  them;  for, 
while  at  the  very  beginning  of  our  Red  Cross  work  over 
there,  while  its  problem,  because  of  its  vastness  and  its 
novelty,  was  still  quite  largely  a  question  of  guesswork, 
purchases  were  made  for  each  department  as  it  requisitioned 
material  or  was  stored  for  them  individually.  Such  a 
method  was  quickly  outgrown,  and  was  bound  to  be  suc- 
ceeded by  a  far  better  one,  which,  as  we  shall  see  presently, 
finally  did  come  to  pass. 


RED  CROSS  AS  A  DEPARTMENT  STORE    83 

From  the  beginning  the  main  warehouses,  like  the  main 
garages,  of  the  American  Ked  Cross  in  France  have  been 
located  in  the  headquarters  city  of  Paris.  Providing  these 
facilities  was  one  of  the  first  tasks  that  confronted  Major 
Murphy.  And  to  understand  the  promptitude  with  which 
he  met  this  task  understand,  if  you  will,  that  by  the  fol- 
lowing September  he  already  had  six  warehouses  in  Paris, 
organized  with  a  capacity  to  handle  10,000  tons  of  sup- 
plies a  month,  which  might  quickly  be  increased  to  60,000 
tons  a  month.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  before  Armistice  Day 
was  reached  there  were  fourteen  of  these  warehouses  and 
they  actually  were  handling  some  10,000,000  tons  a  month. 

The  nucleus  of  this  warehouse  organization  was  again 
the  American  Belief  Clearing  House.  It  gave  the  first 
three  of  the  store  buildings.  The  next  three  were  obtained 
by  Major  Murphy's  organization,  with  the  typical  keen- 
ness of  American  business  men  who,  having  donated  their 
services  and  their  abilities  to  our  great  adventure  overseas, 
purposed  to  make  those  services  and  abilities  work  to  their 
highest  possibilities. 

Warehouses  to  be  effective  and  efficient  must  have  not 
only  good  locations,  but  appropriate  railroad  connections 
and  modern  equipment  for  handling  their  supplies ;  this  is 
primary.  The  French,  themselves,  long  since  have  recog- 
nized it  as  such.  And  because  the  freight  terminal  tracks 
at  Paris  are  so  abundant  and  so  generally  well  planned 
there  were  plenty  of  warehouses  there,  if  one  could  but 
find  them.  To  find  them  was  not  so  hard  a  task,  even 
during  the  war,  if  one  but  had  the  time.  There  was  the 
rub.  The  Red  Cross  did  not  have  the  time ;  there  was  not 
a  day,  not  an  hour,  to  be  wasted.  It  needed  storage  space 
at  once  —  ships  with  hundreds  and  thousands  of  tons  of 
Red  Cross  relief  supplies  already  were  at  the  docks  of 
French  ports.  More  were  on  their  way  across  the  Atlantic. 
Space  to  store  these  cargoes  must  be  found  —  and  found 
immediately.  By  October  1,  1917,  our  Bed  Cross  had 
twenty-one  storage  centers  in  France,  giving  it  5,000,000 


84      WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

cubic  feet  of  space  as  against  but  50,000  three  months 
earlier.  The  largest  unit  was  a  sugar  warehouse  in  the 
wholesale  center  of  Paris,  a  five-story  stone  structure  with 
twelve  hoists,  two  railroad  tracks  on  the  outside,  and  two 
within. 

These  facilities  cost  money,  of  course.  And  that  in  some 
instances  they  cost  more  money  because  time  was  a  large 
factor  in  the  question  can  hardly  be  denied.  Yet  economy 
was  practiced  as  well  as  speed.  This  is  record  fact.  Our 
Eed  Cross  in  France  did  not  permit  itself  to  become  a 
waster  j  even  in  emergencies  which  called  for  a  saving  of 
time  —  no  matter  at  what  expense  —  it  carefully  watched 
the  outgoing  of  dollars. 

When,  for  instance,  it  sought  to  obtain  one  of  the  largest 
of  its  needed  Parisian  warehouses  —  a  really  huge  struc- 
ture with  2,500,000  cubic  feet  of  storage  space  and  served 
by  two  railroad  tracks  thrust  into  its  very  heart  —  it  tried 
to  drive  a  good  Yankee  bargain.  The  place  had  been 
found  after  a  day  of  seemingly  hopeless  and  heartless 
search.  Its  owner  was  located  and  the  rental  cost  dis- 
cussed briefly.  The  owner  wanted  ninety  centimes  (ap- 
proximately seventeen  cents)  a  square  meter.  The  Ked 
Cross  agents  demurred.  They  counter-offered  with  eighty 
centimes.  The  owner  accepted. 

"  Shake ! "  said  the  chief  of  the  party.  They  clasped 
hands. 

"  Never  mind  the  formal  papers  now/7  laughed  our 
Yankee  Red  Cross  bargainer,  "  we'll  take  each  other's 
word.  I  haven't  a  minute  to  lose,  as  we  must  have  the 
place  ready  for  supplies  within  forty-eight  hours." 

"  Impossible !  "  cried  the  French  landlord.  He  knew 
the  real  condition  of  the  place,  which  had  been  unused  and 
unrepaired  for  months. 

Yet  within  forty-eight  hours  the  Eed  Cross  supplies  from 
overseas  actually  were  being  moved  in.  Immediately  upon 
closing  the  deal,  the  Americans  had  sought  labor.  It  was 


RED  CROSS  AS  A  DEPARTMENT  STORE    85 

not  to  be  found,  they  were  told;  all  the  surplus  labor  of 
Paris  being  in  the  trenches  or  else  engaged  in  some  work 
vital  to  the  war's  operations. 

"  Why  not  use  permissionnaires?  "  some  one  suggested. 

The  hint  was  a  good  one.  It  so  happened  that  the 
French  Government  already  had  consented  to  the  employ- 
ment of  this  very  sort  of  labor  by  the  American  Red  Cross. 
So  down  to  the  larger  railroad  stations  of  Paris  hurried  our 
Eed  Cross  agents.  Soldiers  back  from  the  trenches  were 
given  the  opportunity  to  earn  a  few  francs  —  and  gladly 
accepted  it.  Within  a  few  hours  a  crew  of  more  than  a 
hundred  men  had  been  gathered  and  the  work  of  making  the 
newly  acquired  property  ready  to  receive  supplies  begun. 
And  under  American  supervision  it  was  completed  — 
within  the  allotted  two  days. 

This  experience  was  repeated  a  few  weeks  later  when  the 
American  Red  Cross  took  over  the  old  stables  of  the  Com- 
pagnie  Generale  des  Petites  Voitures  in  the  Rue  Chemin  du 
Vert  as  still  another  warehouse  and  had  to  clean  and  make 
them  fit  for  supplies  —  all  within  a  mere  ten  days.  The 
Compagnie  Generale  des  Petites  Voitures  was  an  ancient 
Parisian  institution.  It  operated  —  of  all  the  vehicles 
perhaps  the  most  distinctive  upon  the  streets  of  the 
great  French  capital  —  the  little  victoria-like  fiacre,  drawn 
by  a  wise  and  ancient  horse  with  a  bell  about  its  neck.  The 
war  had  drained  the  city  of  most  of  its  horses  —  they 
were  in  the  French  artillery  —  and  for  a  long  time  before 
the  coming  of  our  Red  Cross  the  great  stables  in  the  Rue 
Chemin  du  Vert  had  been  idle ;  in  fact  for  the  first  time 
in  more  than  half  a  century. 

In  taking  over  the  place  the  officers  of  the  American  Red 
Cross  were  not  blind  to  the  fact  that  they  were  getting  noth- 
ing more  than  a  great,  rambling,  two-story  stable  and  its 
yards,  which  were  just  as  they  had  been  left  when  a  thou- 
sand horses  had  been  led  forth  from  their  stalls.  The  place 
was  a  fearful  litter  of  confusion,  while  crowded  together 


86      WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

at  one  end  of  the  courtyard  were  the  old  fiacres  —  ancient, 
weather-beaten,  decrepit,  abandoned.  They  made  a  pa- 
thetic picture. 

Rumor  told  the  neighborhood,  and  told  it  quickly,  that 
the  Croix  Rouge  Americaine  —  as  the  French  know  our  or- 
ganization over  there  —  had  taken  over  the  old  stables  and 
were  to  use  them  for  warehousing  purposes,  but  rumor  was 
not  smart  enough  to  tell  how  the  trick  was  to  be  done.  It 
did  not  know ;  the  Red  Cross  workers  did.  They  had  found 
after  making  a  careful  inventory  of  the  place,  that  they  had 
on  their  hands  about  8,000  square  yards  of  ground,  covered 
for  the  greater  part  with  more  or  less  dilapidated  buildings 
a  hundred  years  old  or  even  older.  More  than  that,  there 
were  five  hundred  tons  of  manure  in  the  structures  which 
must  be  completely  removed  and  the  premises  thoroughly 
disinfected  before  there  could  be  even  a  thought  of  using 
them  for  goods  storage.  Cleaning  the  Augean  stables  was 
something  of  the  same  sort  of  a  job. 

Various  Parisian  contractors  who  specialize  in  that  sort 
of  work  were  asked  what  they  would  charge  for  the  task 
of  getting  the  big  stables  clean  once  again.  One  said  seven 
thousand  francs.  Another  allowed  that  it  would  cost  five 
thousand.  He  was  the  lowest  bidder.  The  Red  Cross 
turned  from  all  of  them  and  went  to  the  market  gardeners 
of  the  great  central  Halles.  Would  they  help  ?  Of  course 
they  would  —  the  name  of  the  Croix  Rouge  Americaine 
has  some  real  potency  in  France.  In  four  days  the  stables 
were  cleaned  —  perfectly  and  at  an  entire  cost  of  less  than 
two  hundred  francs ! 

Then,  with  the  aid  of  a  hundred  workmen,  the  work  of 
rehabilitating  them  was  begun.  At  that  time  in  Paris 
carpenters  were  not  to  be  had  for  love  or  for  money,  so 
every  available  Red  Cross  man  who  knew  how  to  saw  a 
piece  of  wood  or  whu  could  drive  a  nail  without  hitting 
his  thumb  —  and  at  that,  there  were  many  thumbs  jammed 
before  the  job  was  entirely  done  —  was  pressed  into  service. 
From  the  famous  Latin  Quarter  of  Paris  came  many  volun- 


RED  CROSS  AS  A  DEPARTMENT  STORE         87 

teers,  some  of  them  American  painters  and  sculptors  more 
familiar  with  working  tools  of  other  sorts,  but  all  fired  with 
a  zeal  and  a  determination  to  help.  Such  a  prodigious  din 
of  work  the  neighborhood  could  not  easily  remember ! 

Lumber  was  scarce,  almost  unobtainable  in  fact.  That 
did  not  discourage  our  Red  Cross.  One  of  the  lesser  build- 
ings in  the  compound  was  quickly  marked  for  destruction 
and  actually  was  torn  down  in  order  to  supply  the  lumber 
needed  for  the  repair  of  the  others.  Windows  were  put  in 
and  glazed,  doors  were  hung,  wall  derricks  and  hoistways 
rigged,  roofs  made  water-tight,  and  the  ancient  cobbles  of 
the  courtyard  scrubbed  until  they  were  almost  blue  in  their 
faces.  All  the  stables,  the  vehicle  rooms,  and  the  office 
quarters  were  disinfected,  electric  lights  were  installed  in 
every  corner,  fire  extinguishers  hung  throughout  the  build- 
ings, telephones  placed  in  each  department,  racks  and  bins 
for  supplies  constructed,  lettered,  and  numbered,  smooth 
cement  walks  laid  to  connect  each  building  with  its  fellows 
—  and  not  until  all  of  this  was  done  did  the  Red  Cross  men 
who  had  volunteered  for  the  long  hours  of  hard  manual 
labor  really  dare  stop  for  a  deep  breath. 

"  Talk  about  Hercules,"  laughed  one  of  them  when  it 
was  all  done.  "  He  had  better  look  to  his  old  laurels.  He 
never  did  a  job  like  this  —  in  ten  days." 

It  took  the  folk  of  the  neighborhood  a  long  time  to 
realize  what  had  happened  in  ten  days. 

Yet  there  it  was  —  if  so  you  were  pleased  to  call  it  — 
one  of  the  largest  "  retail-wholesale  "  stores  in  all  Paris, 
with  some  15,000  tons  of  supplies  in  place  in  the  racks 
within  a  fortnight  after  the  herculean  and  record-breaking 
cleansing  task  had  been  finished;  and  fresh  stuff  arriving 
daily  to  meet  the  needs  of  the  hard-pressed  peasantry  and 
soldiers  of  France.  And  in  a  little  time  to  perform  sim- 
ilar service  for  the  men  of  our  own  army  and  navy  over 
there.  Yet,  unlike  any  other  general  store  in  the  world  — 
wholesale  or  retail  —  this  Red  Cross  one  was  open  for  busi- 
ness every  hour  of  the  day  or  the  night.  Comfortable 


88      WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

quarters  were  prepared  and  furnished  for  six  workers,  who 
volunteered  to  live  in  the  warehouse  and  so  be  prepared  at 
any  hour  of  the  night  to  receive  and  execute  an  emergency 
call  for  supplies. 

One  huge  task  of  this  particular  warehouse  was  the 
re-sorting  of  volunteer  or  donated  shipments.  From  a 
period  in  the  early  progress  of  the  war  the  Ked  Cross  ac- 
cepted only  supplies  shipped  to  its  general  stores  —  in  no 
case  whatsoever  to  individual  organizations  —  and  ordered 
that  all  goods  should  be  sorted  and  re-packed  in  France  for 
distribution  there.  So  one  big  room  in  the  Rue  Chemin  du 
Vert  was  turned  over  to  this  work.  It  never  lacked  var- 
iety. In  one  actual  instance  a  big  box  sent  from  some 
city  in  the  Middle  West  burst  open  and  the  first  thing  that 
met  the  gaze  of  the  Red  Cross  warehouse  workers  was  a 
white  satin  high-heeled  party  slipper  poking  its  head  out 
for  a  look  at  "  gay  Paree."  And  it  was  by  no  means  the 
only  tribute  of  this  sort  that  thoughtless  America  gave  to 
starving  France.  There  sometimes  were  real  opportunities 
for  censorship  in  the  re-sorting  room. 

A  man  who  went  to  this  great  warehouse  in  the  early 
days  of  its  existence  brought  back  a  vivid  picture  of  its 
activities. 

"  As  one  entered  the  long,  wide  courtyard  through  the 
great  arch  from  the  street  —  an  arch,  by  the  way,  which 
reminded  me  wonderfully  of  the  Washington  Arch  at  the 
foot  of  Fifth  Avenue,  New  York,"  said  he,  "  and  caught  a 
glimpse  of  the  flags  of  France  and  America  —  and  the  Red 
Cross  —  floating  over  it,  he  became  immediately  impressed 
with  the  militarylike  activity  of  the  entire  place.  This 
was  heightened  by  the  presence  of  a  number  of  French  sol- 
diers and  some  fifty  Algerians  in  their  red  fezzes,  who 
were  at  work  on  crates  and  boxes.  Three  or  four  big  gray 
camions  were  waiting  at  the  upper  end  of  the  yard  while 
the  workmen  loaded  them.  Opposite  were  what  had  once 
been  the  extensive  stable  structures,  now  clean  and  only 


RED  CROSS  AS  A  DEPARTMENT  STORE          89 

reminiscent  of  their  former  tenants  in  the  long  line  of 
chain  halters  hanging  motionless  against  the  walls.  Here 
the  bulkier,  non-perishable  goods  were  stored. 

"  Halfway  up  the  entrance  yard  began  the  series  of 
rooms  whose  shelves,  fashioned  ingeniously  from  packing 
cases,  contained  the  great  supplies  of  condensed  milk,  to- 
bacco, sugar,  soap,  pork,  canned  beef,  and  rice.  Overhead, 
on  what  was  once  the  great  hayloft  of  the  stables,  were  the 
cubicles  where  were  stacked  the  paper-wrapped  bundles  of 
new  clothing  for  men,  women,  and  children,  every  package 
marked  with  the  size,  and  the  sabots  with  thick  wooden 
soles  and  the  sturdy  leathern  .uppers  —  enough  to  outfit 
a  whole  townful  of  people. 

"  Across  a  '  Bridge  of  Sighs  ? —  the  opportunity  to  call 
it  that  is  quite  too  good  to  be  lost  —  to  another  building, 
one  came  upon  stores  of  chairs,  bucksaws,  farm  implements, 
boxes  of  window  glass,  bedside  tables,  wicker  reclining 
chairs,  iron  beds,  mattresses,  pillows,  bolsters,  blankets, 
sheets,  pillowcases,  and  comforters.  Through  a  wide  door- 
way whose  lintel  was  a  rough  hand-hewn  beam  as  thick  as 
a  man's  body  and  a  century  old,  were  the  dormitory  and 
the  messroom  of  the  red-fezzed  Algerians  who,  by  the  way, 
were  under  the  command  of  two  French  officers.  Next 
came  the  lofts,  with  their  bins  of  crutches,  surgical  dress- 
ings, rubber  sheeting,  absorbent  cotton,  enamel  ware,  bright 
copper  sterilizers,  and  boxes  of  rubber  gloves  for  hospital 
use.  Still  another  building  housed  the  immense  supplies 
of  wool  gloves  and  socks,  pajamas,  sweaters,  and  women's 
and  children's  underwear  and  high  stacks  of  brown  cordu- 
roy jackets  and  trousers,  for  the  Red  Cross  sought  to  fur- 
nish to  the  peasant  just  the  same  sort  of  clothing  that  he 
and  his  father's  grandfather  were  accustomed  to  wear ;  even 
to  the  beloved  beret. 

"  Throughout  the  storage  building  one  came  across  evi- 
dences of  the  manner  in  which  every  available  bit  of  old 
wood  was  utilized  for  reconstruction  in  order  to  avoid  fur- 
ther expenditure.  Bins  and  racks  were  made  of  ancient 


90      WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

doors  and  window  frames  and  crates  had  been  carefully 
fashioned  into  delivery  counters.  In  fact  small  '  branch 
stores  '  for  the  distribution  of  goods  in  less  than  box  or 
crate  lots  were  established  in  every  corner  of  the  Kue 
Chemin  du  Vert  warehouse,  with  clerks  always  in  attend- 
ance upon  them.  In  this  way  it  was  as  easy  to  fit  out  an 
individual  with  what  he  or  she  needed  as  to  fit  out  an  en- 
tire community,  and  the  reverse. 

"  On  the  right  side  of  the  main  courtyard,  running  back 
from  the  administration  offices,  were  the  long,  narrow  ship- 
ping rooms  where  the  bundles  called  for  were  made  up  from 
the  stock  which  lined  the  walls  and  were  tagged  and  ad- 
dressed by  a  corps  of  young  women;  the  crate  lots  being 
attended  to  by  the  men  in  the  courtyard  below.  Still  far- 
ther on  was  the  department  which  received  the  packages 
of  used  clothing,  of  knitted  goods,  or  the  other  things  sent 
by  humane  persons  in  countless  cities  of  America  and 
France  to  the  needy  ones  in  the  fighting  lines,  or  back  of 
them.  Below  and  beyond  this  room  were  the  coal  bins,  the 
carpenter's  shop,  in  which  tables  and  bedside  stands  con- 
stantly were  being  turned  out  from  new  lumber,  and  the 
<  calaboose,'  for  the  benefit  of  an  occasionally  recalcitrant 
Algerian.  And  adjoining  the  main  courtyard  was  still 
another  room  almost  as  large ;  and  this  last  was  the  place  of 
receipt  of  all  supplies.  Here  they  were  inspected,  counted, 
and  assigned  to  their  proper  buildings  and  compartments. 
The  entire  place  was  a  great  hive,  literally  a  hive  of  indus- 
try. And  the  people  of  the  neighborhood  never  passed  its 
arched  entrance  without  first  stopping  to  look  in,  it  all  was 
so  amazing  to  them.  They  wondered  if  there  ever  could 
have  been  a  time  when  a  thousand  horses  were  stabled 
there." 

Upon  the  day  of  the  signing  of  the  armistice  and  for 
many  months  thereafter  Warehouse  No.  1  in  the  Rue 
Chemin  du  Vert  remained  a  busy  hive  of  industry.  It 
still  handled  almost  every  conceivable  sort  of  commodity, 
and  perhaps  the  only  difference  in  its  appearance  from  the 


RED  CROSS  AS  A  DEPARTMENT  STORE    91 

day  that  the  graphic  New  Yorker  saw  it  was  that  German 
prisoners  —  each  with  a  doggedly  complacent  look  upon 
his  face  and  a  large  "  P.  G."  upon  his  back,  —  had  re- 
placed the  Algerians  for  the  hard  manual  labor.  It  con- 
tinued to  employ  fifteen  men  and  women  in  its  office  and 
from  thirty-five  to  forty  Red  Cross  workers,  American  or 
French,  while  the  value  of  the  stock  constantly  kept  on 
hand  was  roughly  estimated  at  close  to  $2,000,000.  From 
thirty-five  to  forty  tons  were  daily  being  sent  out.  Yet 
how  was  a  stock  valuation  of  $2,000,000  really  to  be  com- 
pared with  one  of  $2,500,000  in  warehouse  No.  6  in  the 
Eue  Cambrai  or  $3,000,000  at  No.  24  in  the  Rue  Curial  ? 
And  these  were  but  three  of  eleven  Red  Cross  warehouses 
in  Paris  at  the  time  of  the  armistice.  And  a  report  issued 
very  soon  after  showed  twenty-nine  other  warehouses  of 
the  American  Red  Cross  in  France,  eight  of  them  in  the  city 
of  Dijon,  which,  because  of  its  strategic  railroad  location, 
was  a  store  center  of  greatest  importance  for  our  army  over 
there. 

Perhaps  you  like  facts  with  your  picture. 

Well,  then,  returning  from  the  picture  of  the  thing  to 
the  fact,  we  find  at  the  time  of  the  first  definite  general 
organization  of  our  Red  Cross  in  France  —  in  September, 
1917  —  a  Bureau  of  Transportation  and  Supplies  was 
formed  under  the  direction  of  Mr.  R.  H.  Sherman.  A 
little  later  a  slightly  more  comprehensive  organization  was 
charted,  and  a  separate  Bureau  of  Supplies  created,  with 
Mr.  Joseph  R.  Swan  as  its  immediate  director.  This  was 
subdivided  into  four  main  sections :  Paris  Warehouses,  Out- 
side Warehouses,  Receiving,  and  Shipping.  This  organ- 
ization remained  practically  unchanged  until  the  general 
reorganization  plan  of  August,  1918,  which  we  have  al- 
ready seen,  when  the  bureau  became  the  Section  of  Stores 
and,  as  such,  a  factor,  and  a  mighty  important  factor,  of 
the  Division  of  Requirements. 

From  that  time  forward  the  problem  was  one  of  growth, 
great  growth,  rather  than  that  of  organization.  It  was  a 


92      WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

problem  of  finding  warehouses  to  accommodate  our  sup- 
plies over  there ;  of  finding  competent  men  to  oversee  and 
operate  the  warehouses,  and  then,  in  due  order,  of  keeping 
the  supplies  moving  through  the  warehouses  and  out  to  the 
men  at  the  front.  In  due  course  we  shall  see  how  these 
supplies  functioned.  For  the  moment  consider  the  fact 
that  in  an  initiatory  six  weeks,  from  October  11  to  Novem- 
ber 30,  1917,  Mr.  Swan  submitted  a  detailed  account  show- 
ing how  he  had  invested  nearly  $8,000,000  in  the  purchase 
of  general  stores  for  our  Red  Cross.  In  the  press  of  emer- 
gency work  —  there  hardly  was  a  month  or  a  day  from  our 
arrival  in  France  until  after  the  signing  of  the  armistice 
when  the  situation  could  not  have  been  fairly  described  as 
emergency  —  it  was  possible  to  take  but  one  general  in- 
ventory. That  was  made,  for  accounting  purposes,  as  of 
February  24,  1918,  and  showed  the  value  of  the  American 
Red  Cross  stores  then  on  hand  in  its  warehouses  in  France 
to  be  33,960,999.49  francs,  well  over  $6,000,000.  At  the 
first  of  the  following  November  —  eleven  days  before  the 
signing  of  the  armistice  —  another  inventory  was  taken. 
The  stocks  had  grown.  There  were  in  the  principal  ware- 
houses of  the  Red  Cross  alone  and  including  its  stock  of 
coal  upon  the  Quai  de  la  Lorie  supplies  valued  at  46,452,- 
018.80  francs,  or  close  to  $9,000,000.  Figures  are  valu- 
able when  they  mount  to  sizes  such  as  these. 

Yet  figures  cannot  tell  the  way  in  which  the  warehousing 
organization  of  the  American  Red  Cross  met  the  constant 
emergencies  which  confronted  it.  Like  the  Transporta- 
tion Department,  it  was  forever  and  at  all  times  on  the  job. 
For  instance,  from  the  beginning  of  that  last  German  ad- 
vance, in  the  Ides  of  March,  1918,  until  it  was  reaching  its 
final  fearful  thrusts  —  late  in  June  and  early  in  July  — 
there  was  on  hand,  night  and  day,  a  crew  at  the  warehouse, 
which  had  been  fashioned  from  a  former  taxicab  stables  in 
the  Rue  Chemin  du  Vert,  a  complete  crew  to  load  camions 
by  the  dozens,  by  the  hundreds,  if  necessary.  In  such  a 
super-emergency  no  six  men  housed  in  the  plant  would  do ; 


RED  CROSS  AS  A  DEPARTMENT  STORE    93 

for  there  were  nights  on  which  twenty,  thirty,  and  even 
forty  of  the  big  camions  went  rolling  out  through  that  great 
archway  with  their  supplies  for  our  boys  at  the  front  —  the 
very  boys  who  so  soon  were  to  play  their  great  part  in  the 
supreme  victories  of  the  war.  On  those  summer  nights 
warehouse  work  was  speeded  up,  to  put  it  very  mildly  in- 
deed. JMen  worked  long  hours  without  rest  and  with  but  a 
single  thought  —  the  accomplishment  of  real  endeavor 
while  there  yet  remained  time  to  save  Paris  and  all  the 
rest  of  France.  And  in  such  spirit  is  victory  born. 

Do  not,  I  pray  you,  conceive  the  idea  that  all  the  ware- 
house work  was  done  in  Paris.  I  have  hinted  at  the  im- 
portance of  Dijon,  the  great  army  store  center,  as  a  Ked 
Cross  stores  center,  and  have,  myself,  stood  in  the  great 
American  Red  Cross  warehouse  upon  the  lining  of  the  inner 
harbor  of  St.  Nazaire  arid  have  with  mine  own  eyes  seen 
8,000  cases  stacked  under  their  capacious  roofs  —  food- 
stuffs and  clothing  and  comforts  and  hospital  supplies 
which  came  forever  and  in  a  steady  stream  from  the  trans- 
ports docking  at  that  important  American  receiving  point, 
and  have  known  of  warehouses  to  be  established  in  strange 
quarters,  stranger  sometimes  than  the  abandoned  stables  of 
the  horse-drawn  taxicabs  of  Paris,  here  in  an  ancient  ex- 
position building  upon  the  outskirts  of  a  sizable  French 
city,  there  in  a  convent,  and  again  in  a  church  or  a  school, 
or  even  again  in  a  stable. 

Here  was  a  little  town,  not  many  miles  back  from  the 
northern  front.  The  Red  Cross  determined  to  set  up  a 
warehouse  there,  both  for  military  and  civilian  relief  sup- 
plies. An  agent  from  the  Paris  headquarters  went  up 
there  to  confer  with  the  local  representative  in  regard  to 
the  proper  location  for  the  plant.  The  local  man  favored 
one  building,  the  Paris  representative  another  which  was 
nearer  to  the  railroad  station.  While  they  argued  as  to 
the  merits  of  the  two  buildings  German  airmen  flew  over 
the  town  and  destroyed  one  of  them.  And  before  they 


94      WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

could  compromise  on  the  other,  the  French  Government 
requisitioned  it  as  a  barracks. 

Now  was  a  time  for  deep  thought  rather  than  com- 
promise. And  deep  thought  won  —  it  always  does.  Deep 
thought  moved  the  American  Red  Cross  warehouse  into  the 
ancient  seminary  there,  even  though  that  sturdy  structure 
had  been  pretty  well  peppered  by  the  boche.  When  the 
Red  Cross  moved  in,  you  still  could  count  fifty-one  distinct 
shell  holes  in  it ;  another  and  a  final  one  came  while  it  still 
was  in  the  process  of  adaptation  to  warehouse  uses.  In  this 
badly  battered  structure  lived  the  Red  Cross  warehouse 
man  and  his  three  assistants  —  all  of  them  camion  chauf- 
feurs —  after  they  had  put  forty-five  panes  of  glass  in 
with  their  own  hands.  Then  the  supply  of  glass  ran  out. 
In  the  former  chapel  of  the  seminary  fourteen  great  win- 
dow frames  had  to  be  covered  with  muslin,  which  served, 
after  a  fashion,  to  keep  out  the  stress  of  weather.  Twenty- 
seven  of  the  precious  panes  of  glass  went  into  the  office  — 
where  daylight  was  of  the  greatest  necessity.  The  rest 
were  used,  in  alternation  with  the  muslin,  for  the  living 
quarters,  where  the  Red  Cross  men  cooked  their  own  meals, 
in  the  intervals  between  dealing  out  warehouse  supplies. 
It  was  hard  work,  but  the  chauffeurs  did  not  complain. 
Indeed  it  so  happened  that  their  chief  did  most  of  the 
complaining. 

"  What  is  the  use  ?  "  he  sputtered  one  afternoon  while  the 
war  still  was  a  day-by-day  uncertainty.  "  Those  boys  will 
put  in  a  big  day's  work,  every  one  of  them,  come  home  and 
not  know  enough  to  go  to  bed.  Like  as  not  they  will  take 
a  couple  of  hours  and  climb  up  some  round  knoll  to  watch 
the  artillery  fire.  When  the  town  was  in  the  actual  line  of 
fire  —  not  more  than  a  fortnight  ago  —  one  of  them  turned 
up  missing.  He  had  been  with  us  only  a  moment  before, 
so  we  began  hunting  through  the  warehouse  for  him. 
Where  do  you  suppose  we  found  him  ?  Let  me  tell  you :  he 
was  up  in  the  belfry,  the  biggest  and  the  best  target  in 
the  town.  Said  he  wanted  to  see  where  the  shells  were 


RED  CROSS  AS  A  DEPARTMENT  STORE    95 

striking.  I  told  him  to  come  down,  the  Red  Cross  wasn't 
paying  him  for  damn  foolishness.  But  you  couldn't  help 
liking  the  nerve  of  the  boy,  could  you  ?  " 

Courage ! 

How  it  did  run  hand  in  hand  with  endeavor  all  through 
the  progress  of  this  war.  And  it  was  not  limited  to  the 
men  of  the  actual  fighting  forces.  The  Red  Cross  had 
more  than  its  even  share  of  it.  The  great,  appealing  roll 
of  honor  in  the  Hotel  Regina  headquarters  —  the  list  of 
the  American  Red  Cross  men  and  women  who  gave  their 
lives  in  the  service  of  their  country  —  was  mute  evidence 
of  this.  Courage  in  full  measure,  and  yet  never  with  false 
heroics.  Full  of  the  sturdy  everyday  courage,  the  courage 
of  the  casual  things,  exemplified,  for  instance,  in  this  letter 
from  the  files  of  the  Stores  Section,  written  by  the  agent 
in  charge  of  another  of  its  warehouses  in  northern  France : 

"  A  shipment  of  four  rolls  of  oiled  cloth  arrived  most 
opportunely  a  few  days  ago  and  one  roll  is  being  employed 
locally  to  repair  the  many  panes  of  window  glass  destroyed 
in  last  night's  air  raid.  In  connection  with  this  raid  it 
may  be  added  that  one  of  our  chauffeurs  nearly  figured  as 
a  victim  of  this  raid,  the  window  in  his  lodging  being  blown 
in  and  a  large  hole  knocked  in  the  roof  of  his  house. 

"  I  presume  that  it  is  violating  no  military  secret  to  add 
that  another  raid  from  the  bodies  is  looked  for  to-night  and 
in  case  it  does  come  the  other  rolls  of  window  cloth  may 
come  into  play.  .  .  ." 

It  was  in  these  very  days  of  the  great  spring  offensive  of 
1918,  that  the  Supplies  Department,  like  the  Transporta- 
tion Department  of  our  Red  Cross  overseas,  began  to  have 
its  hardest  tests.  For  in  addition  to  the  regular  routine 
of  its  great  warehousing  function,  there  came,  with  the 
rapidly  increasing  number  of  troops,  hospitals  and  refu- 
gees, rapidly  increasing  special  duties  for  it  to  perform; 
greatly  increased  quantities  of  goods  to  be  shipped.  And 


96      WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

I  think  it  but  fair  to  state  that  without  the  vision  of  one 
man,  Major  Field,  there  might  not  have  been  many  sup- 
plies to  ship.  Immediately  after  his  appointment  as  Chief 
of  the  Bureau  of  Supplies,  Major  Field  began  to  purchase 
goods,  in  great  quantities  and  an  almost  inconceivable  var- 
iety. He  bought  in  the  French  market,  in  the  English 
market,  in  the  Spanish  market,  from  the  commissary  stores 
of  the  United  States  Army  —  in  fact  from  every  conceiv- 
able corner  and  source  of  supply;  as  well  as  from  some 
which  apparently  were  so  remote  as  hardly  to  be  even  con- 
ceivable. He  stored  away  beds,  tents,  sheets,  clothing, 
toilet  articles,  and  cases  of  groceries  by  the  thousands,  and 
still  continued  to  buy.  The  Red  Cross  gasped.  The  A. 
E.  F.  protested.  The  vast  warehouses  were  filled  almost 
to  the  bursting  point.  Major  Field  listened  to  the  protes- 
tations, then  smiled,  and  went  out,  buying  still  mere  sup- 
plies. His  smile  was  cryptic,  and  yet  was  not ;  it  was  the 
smile  of  confidence,  the  smile  of  serenity.  And  both  con- 
fidence and  serenity  were  justified.  For  the  days  of  the 
drive  showed  —  and  showed  conclusively  —  that  if  our 
American  Red  Cross  had  not  been  so  well  stocked  in  sup- 
plies it  would  have  failed  in  the  great  mission  overseas  to 
which  we  had  intrusted  it. 

"  The th  Regiment  has  moved  up  beyond  its  bag- 
gage train.  Can  the  Red  Cross  ship  blankets  and  kits 
through  to  it  ?  " 

This  was  a  typical  emergency  request  —  from  an  organ- 
ization of  three  thousand  men.  It  was  answered  in  the 
typical  fashion  —  with  a  full  carload  of  blankets  and  other 
bedding.  The  kits  followed  in  a  truck. 

"  A  field  hospital  is  needed  behind  the  new  American 
lines,"  was  another.  It,  too,  was  answered  promptly ;  with 
several  carloads  of  hospital  equipment,  surgical  dressings, 
and  drugs.  These  things  sound  simple,  and  were  not. 
And  the  fact  that  they  were  many  times  multiplied  added 
nothing  to  the  simplicity  of  the  situation.  In  fact  there 
came  a  time  when  it  was  quite  impossible  to  keep  any  exact 


RED  CROSS  AS  A  DEPARTMENT  STORE    97 

account  of  the  tonnage  shipped,  because  the  calls  came  so 
thick  and  fast  and  were  so  urgent  that  no  one  stopped  for 
the  usual  requisitions  but  answered  any  reasonable  de- 
mands. The  requisition  system  could  wait  for  a  less  crit- 
ical time,  and  did. 

One  day  a  message  came  that  a  certain  field  hospital  was 
out  of  ether  —  that  its  surgeons  were  actually  performing 
painful  operations  upon  conscious  men  —  all  because  the 
army  had  run  out  of  its  stock  of  anaesthetics.  The  men  at 
the  American  Eed  Cross  supply  headquarters  sickened  at 
the  very  thought ;  they  moved  heaven  and  earth  to  start  a 
camion  load  of  the  precious  ether  through  to  the  wounded 
men  at  the  field  hospital,  and  followed  it  up  with  twenty-five 
truckloads  of  other  surgical  supplies. 

Under  the  reorganization  of  the  American  Red  Cross  in 
France  which  was  effected  under  the  Murnane  plan,  the 
entire  work  of  purchase  and  warehousing  was  brought  un- 
der a  single  Bureau  of  Supplies,  which  was  ranked  in  turn 
as  a  Department  of  Supplies.  This  Bureau  was  promptly 
subdivided  into  two  sections:  that  of  Stores  and  that  of 
Purchases.  Taking  them  in  the  order  set  down  in  the 
official  organization  plan,  we  find  that  the  headquarters 
section  of  Stores  —  situated  in  Paris  —  was  charged  with 
the  operation  of  all  central  and  port  warehouses  and  their 
contents  and  was  to  be  in  a  position  to  honor  all  properly 
approved  requisitions  from  them,  so  far  as  was  humanly 
possible.  It  was  further  charged  to  confer  with  the  comp- 
troller of  our  French  American  Red  Cross  organization  and 
so  to  prepare  proper  system  and  check  upon  these  supplies. 
In  each  of  the  nine  zones  there  were  to  be  subsections  of 
stores,  answerable  for  operation  to  the  Zone  Manager  and 
for  policy  to  the  Paris  headquarters,  but  so  organized  as  to 
keep  not  only  sufficient  supplies  for  all  the  ordinary  needs 
of  the  zones,  but  in  various  well-situated  warehouses,  enough 
for  occasions  of  large  emergency  —  and  all  within  com- 
paratively short  haul. 


98      WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

The  Section  of  Purchases  corresponded  to  the  purchasing 
agent  of  a  large  corporation.  Remember  that  the  pur- 
chasing opportunities  in  France  were  extremely  limited, 
so  that  by  far  the  greater  part  of  this  work  must  be  per- 
formed by  the  parent  organization  here  in  the  United 
States,  and  sent  —  as  were  the  circus  tents  —  in  response 
to  requisitions,  either  by  cable  or  by  mail.  Incidentally, 
however,  remember  that  no  small  amount  of  purchasing  for 
the  benefit  of  our  army  and  navy  in  France  was  done  both 
in  England  and  in  Spain,  which,  in  turn,  was  a  relief  to 
the  overseas  transport  problem.  For  it  must  ever  be  re- 
membered that  the  famous  "  bridge  across  the  Atlantic  " 
was  at  all  times,  until  after  the  signing  of  the  armistice  at 
least,  fearfully  overcrowded.  It  was  only  the  urgent  neces- 
sities of  the  Red  Cross  and  its  supplies  that  made  it  suc- 
cessful in  gaining  the  previous  tonnage  space  east  from 
New  York,  or  Boston,  or  Newport  News.  And  even  then 
the  tonnage  was  held  to  essentials;  essentials  whose  abso- 
luteness was  almost  a  matter  of  affidavit. 

Yet  even  the  essentials  ofttimes  mounted  high.  Before 
me  lies  a  copy  of  a  cablegram  sent  from  Paris  to  Washing- 
ton early  in  January,  1919.  It  outlines  in  some  detail  the 
foodstuff  needs  of  the  American  Red  Cross  in  France  for 
the  next  three  months.  Some  qf  the  larger  items,  in  tons, 
follow : 

Sugar 50  Bacon 50 

Rice   100  Salt  Park 50 

Tapioca 10  Ham 50 

Cheese  50  Prunes 50 

Coffee 50  Soap 100 

Chocolate    50  Apricots    25 

Cocoa 100  Peaches  25 

And  all  of  this  in  addition  to  the  10,000  cases  of  evap- 
orated milk,  5,000  of  condensed  milk,  3,000  of  canned  corn 
beef,  2,000  of  canned  tomatoes,  1,000  each  of  canned  corn 
and  canned  peas,  and  1,000  gross  of  matches,  while  the 


RED  CROSS  AS  A  DEPARTMENT  STORE         99 

quantities  ordered  even  of  such  things  as  cloves  and  cinna- 
mon and  pepper  and  mustard  ran  to  sizable  amounts. 

I  have  no  desire  to  bore  you  with  long  columns  or  tables 
of  figures  —  for  this  is  the  story  of  our  Red  Cross  with  our 
army  in  France  and  not  a  report.  Yet,  after  all,  some 
figures  are  impressive.  And  these  given  here  are  enough 
to  show  that  of  all  the  cogs  and  corners  of  the  big  machine, 
the  Purchase  and  Stores  sections  of  the  organization  in 
France  had  its  full  part  to  do. 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE  DOUGHBOY  MOVES  TOWARD  THE  FRONT 

BY  July,  1917,  the  first  Divisions  of  our  amazing  army 
began  to  seep  into  the  battle  countries  of  Europe.  It 
had  not  been  the  intention  of  either  our  War  Department 
or  its  general  staff  to  send  the  army  overseas  until  the  first 
of  1918 ;  the  entire  plan  of  organization  and  preparation 
here  in  the  United  States  had  been  predicated  upon  such  a 
program.  Yet  the  situation  overseas  was  dire  indeed. 
Three  years  of  warfare  —  and  such  warfare  —  had  begun 
to  fag  even  the  indomitable  spirits  of  England  and  of 
France.  The  debacle  of  Russia  was  ever  before  the  eyes 
of  these  nations.  In  the  words  of  their  own  leaders,  their 
morale  was  at  its  lowest  point.  France,  in  one  glorious 
moment  in  1917,  had  seemed,  under  the  leadership  of 
Nivelle,  to  be  close  to  the  turning  point  toward  victory. 
But  she  had  seen  herself  miss  the  point,  and  was  forced 
again  in  rugged  doggedness  to  stand  stoutly  with  England 
and  hold  the  line  for  the  democracy  of  the  world. 

In  such  an  hour  there  was  no  opportunity  for  delay ;  not 
even  for  the  slight  delay  incidental  to  raising  an  American 
Army  of  a  mere  half  million,  training  it  in  the  simplest 
possible  fashion,  and  then  dispatching  it  overseas.  Such 
a  method  would  have  been  more  gratifying  to  our  military 
pride.  We  sacrificed  that  pride,  and  shall  never  regret  the 
hour  of  that  decision.  We  first  sent  hospital  detachments 
from  our  army  medical  service  to  be  brigaded  with  the 
British,  who  seemed  to  have  suffered  their  most  severe 
losses  in  their  hospital  staffs,  and  sent  engineer  regiments 
not  only  to  build  the  United  States  Military  Railroad,  of 
which  you  have  already  read,  but  also  to  aid  the  weakened 
land  transport  sections  of  the  French  and  British  armies. 

100 


OUR  RED  CROSS  AT  THE  FRONT 
A  typical  A.  R.  C.  dugout  just  behind  the  lines 


THE  DOUGHBOY  MOVES  TOWARD  THE  FfeONT'      101 

And  General  John  J.  Pershing,  with  adequate  staff  assist- 
ance, crossed  to  Paris  to  prepare  for  the  first  and  all- 
glorious  American  campaign  in  Europe. 

"  The  program  had  been  carefully  drawn  up,"  wrote 
Lieutenant  Colonel  Repington,  the  distinguished  British 
military  critic,  in  a  review  on  the  performance  of  our  army 
in  the  London  Morning  Post,  of  December  9,  1918.  "  It 
anticipated  the  orderly  arrival  in  France  of  complete  units, 
with  all  their  services,  guns,  transport,  and  horses,  and 
when  these  larger  units  had  received  a  finishing  course  in 
France  and  had  been  trained  up  to  concert  pitch  it  was  in- 
tended to  put  them  into  the  line  and  build  up  a  purely 
American  Army  as  rapidly  as  possible.  After  studying 
the  situation,  the  program  and  the  available  tonnage  in 
those  days,  I  did  not  expect  that  General  Pershing  could 
take  the  field  with  a  trained  army  of  accountable  numbers 
much  before  the  late  summer  or  autumn  of  1918." 

Yet  by  the  first  day  of  January,  1918,  there  were  al- 
ready in  France  four  American  Divisions,  each  with  an 
approximate  strength  of  28,153  men,  by  February  there 
were  six  Divisions,  and  by  March,  eight.  It  is  fair  to  say, 
however,  that  even  by  March  only  two  of  the  Divisions  were 
fit  to  be  in  the  line,  and  none  in  the  other  active  sectors. 
Training  for  modern  warfare  is  indeed  an  arduous  task. 
Yet  our  amazing  army  did  not  shirk  it,  and  even  in  the  dis- 
piriting and  terrifying  days  of  the  spring  of  1918  kept 
to  its  task  of  preparing  itself  for  the  great  ordeal  just 
ahead,  and,  almost  at  the  very  hour  that  the  last  great 
German  drive  began  to  assume  really  serious  proportions, 
was  finishing  those  preparations.  Ten  Divisions  were 
ready,  before  the  spring  was  well  advanced,  to  stand 
shoulder  to  shoulder  with  British  Divisions  should  such  an 
unusual  course  have  been  found  indispensable.  In  fact, 
anticipating  this  very  emergency,  brigading  with  the  Brit- 
ish had  already  been  begun.  But  as  the  British  reinforce- 
ments began  pouring  into  Northern  France  the  possibil- 
ities of  the  emergency  arising  diminished.  And  five  of 


102     WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

our  Divisions  were  returned  south  into  the  training  camps 
of  the  United  States  Army. 

The  War  Department  figures  of  the  size  of  our  army  in 
France  throughout  1918  —  which  at  the  time  could  not  be 
made  public,  because  of  military  necessities  —  tell  the 
story  of  its  rapid  growth.  They  show  the  number  of  Divi- 
sions in  France  and  in  line  and  in  reserve  to  have  been  as 
follows : 

1918                       In  France      In  Line  and  Reserve 

April  1 10 3 

Hay    13 4 

June 16 6 

July    24 9 

August 32 20 

September 37 25 

October    40 31 

November   42 30 

This  tabulation  takes  no  count  whatsoever  of  the  non- 
combatants  of  the  S.  O.  S. —  as  the  army  man  knows  the 
Service  of  Supplies  —  or  the  other  great  numbers  of  men 
employed  in  the  rearward  service  of  the  United  States 
Army.  It  is  perhaps  enough  to  say  that  the  largest  num- 
ber of  our  troops  employed  in  France  was  on  September  26, 
the  day  that  General  Pershing  began  his  Meuse-Argonne 
offensive.  On  that  day  our  army  consisted  of  1,224,720 
combatants  and  493,764  noncombatants,  a  total  of  1,718,- 
484  men  in  its  actual  forces. 

It  is  known  now  that  if  the  war  had  continued  we  should 
probably  have  doubled  those  figures  within  a  compara- 
tively few  months  and  should  have  had  eighty  Divisions  in 
France  by  April,  1919,  which  would  have  made  the  United 
States  Army  by  all  odds  the  most  considerable  of  any  of 
the  single  belligerent  nations  fighting  in  France. 

We  have  told  elsewhere  a  little  of  the  romance  of  the 
transport  of  our  men ;  here  in  cold  figures  —  statistics 
which  scorn  romance  in  their  composition  —  is  their  result. 
We  shall  see  through  our  Red  Cross  spectacles  again  and 


THE  DOUGHBOY  MOVES  TOWARD  THE  FRONT      103 

again  the  performances  of  that  army,  as  the  men  and  the 
women  of  the  American  Red  Cross  saw  them. 

In  the  meantime  let  us  turn  again,  therefore,  to  Lieu- 
tenant Colonel  Repington,  whose  reputation  in  this  regard 
is  well  established,  and  find  him  saying  of  the  commanding 
general  of  our  army : 

"  To  my  mind,  there  is  nothing  finer  in  the  war  than  the 
splendid  good  comradeship  which  General  Pershing  dis- 
played throughout,  and  nothing  more  striking  than  the  de- 
termined way  in  which  he  pursued  the  original  American 
plan  of  making  the  American  arms  both  respected  and 
feared.  The  program  of  arrivals,  speeded  up  and  varied 
in  response  to  the  appeal  of  the  Allies,  involved  him  in 
appalling  difficulties,  from  which  the  American  army  suf- 
fered to  the  last.  His  generous  answer  to  cries  for  help 
in  other  sectors  left  him  for  long  stretches  almost,  if  not 
quite,  without  an  army.  He  played  the  game  like  a  man 
by  his  friends,  but  all  the  time  with  a  singleness  of  pur- 
pose and  a  strength  of  character  which  history  will  ap- 
plaud; he  kept  his  eyes  fixed  on  the  great  objective  which 
he  ultimately  attained  and  silenced  his  detractors  in  at- 
taining it.  To  his  calm  and  steadfast  spirit  we  owe  much. 
To  his  staff,  cool  amidst  the  most  disturbing  events,  im- 
pervious to  panic,  rapid  in  decision,  and  quick  to  act,  the 
allied  world  owes  a  tribute.  To  his  troops,  what  can  we 
say  ?  They  were  crusaders.  They  came  to  beat  the  Ger- 
mans and  they  beat  them  soundly.  They  worthily  main- 
tained the  tradition  of  their  race.  They  fought  and  won 
for  an  idea." 

Truer  words  have  not  been  written.  To  one  who  has 
made  even  a  superficial  study  of  our  army  in  France,  the 
figure  of  the  doughboy  —  the  boy  from  the  little  home  in 
Connecticut  or  Kansas  or  Oregon  —  looms  large  indeed. 
I  did  not,  myself,  see  him  in  action.  Other  and  abler  pens 
have  told  and  are  still  telling  of  his  unselfishness,  his 
audacity,  his  seemingly  unbounded  heroism  both  in  the 
trenches  and  upon  the  open  field  of  battle.  The  little  rows 


104     WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

of  crosses  in  the  shattered  forest  of  the  Argonne  or  upon 
the  roads  leading  from  Paris  into  Chateau-Thierry,  else- 
where over  the  face  of  lovely  France,  tell  the  story  of  his 
sacrifice  more  graphically  than  any  pen  may  ever  tell  it. 

Frequently  I  have  seen  the  doughboy  in  Paris  as  well  as 
in  the  other  cities  and  towns  and  in  our  military  camps  in 
France.  He  is  an  amusing  fellow.  One  can  hardly  fail 
to  like  him,  I  have  talked  with  him  —  by  the  dozens  and 
by  the  hundreds.  I  have  argued  with  him,  for  sometimes 
we  have  failed  to  agree.  But  I  have  never  failed  to  sym- 
pathize, or  to  understand.  Nor,  as  for  that  matter,  to 
appreciate.  No  one  who  has  seen  the  performance  of  our 
amazing  army  in  France,  or  the  immediate  results  of  that 
performance,  can  fail  to  appreciate.  If  you  are  a  finicky 
person  you  may  easily  see  the  defects  that  haste  brought 
into  the  making  of  our  expeditionary  army  —  waste  in  ma- 
terial and  in  personnel  here  and  there ;  but,  after  all,  these 
very  defects  are  almost  inherent  in  any  organization  raised 
to  meet  a  supreme  emergency,  and  they  appear  picayune 
indeed  when  one  places  them  alongside  the  marvel  of  its 
performance  —  when  one  thinks  of  Chateau-Thierry  or 
Saint  Mihiel  or  the  Argonne. 

It  is  not  the  province  of  this  book  to  describe  the  opera- 
tions of  our  army  in  France  except  in  so  far  as  they 
were  touched  directly  by  the  operations  of  our  Ked 
Cross  over  there.  So,  back  to  our  text.  You  will  recall 
that  Major  Grayson  M.-P.  Murphy,  our  first  Eed  Cross 
Commissioner  to  France,  and  his  staff  arrived  in  Paris 
coincidently  with  General  Pershing  on  the  thirteenth  of 
June,  1917.  They  went  right  to  work,  despite  terrific 
odds,  in  the  building  of  a  working  organization.  At  about 
the  hour  of  their  coming  there  was  developing  here  in  the 
United  States  a  rather  distinct  feeling  in  certain  wide- 
spread religious  and  philanthropic  organizations  that  they 
should  be  distinctly  represented  in  our  war  enterprise  in 
Europe.  The  patriotism  that  stirred  these  great  organ- 


THE  DOUGHBOY  MOVES  TOWARD  THE  FRONT       105 

izations  was  admirable;  it  was  unmistakable,  and  finally 
resulted  in  certain  of  the  larger  ones  —  the  Young  Men's 
Christian  Association,  the  Knights  of  Columbus,  the  Young 
Women's  Christian  Association  and  the  Salvation  Army  — 
being  given  definite  status  in  the  war  work  overseas.  In 
the  case  of  the  Y.  M.  C.  A. —  by  far  the  largest  of  all  these 
organizations  —  it  was  allotted  the  major  problem  of  pro- 
viding entertainment  for  the  enlisted  men  and  the  officers 
at  the  camps  in  France,  in  England,  in  Italy  and,  in  due 
time,  in  the  German  valley  of  the  Rhine.  At  a  later  hour 
the  very  difficult  problem  of  providing  canteens,  that  would 
be,  in  effect,  nothing  more  nor  less  than  huge  post  exchanges, 
was  thrust  upon  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  It  accepted  the  problem 
—  not  gladly,  but  in  patriotic  spirit  —  and  even  though 
the  experiment  brought  upon  its  shoulders  much  thought- 
less and  bitter  criticism,  saw  it  bravely  through. 

The  Y.  M.  C.  A.  therefore,  was  to  undertake,  speaking 
by  and  large,  the  canteen  problem  of  the  camps,  while  that 
of  the  hospitals,  the  clocks  at  the  ports  of  debarkation  and 
embarkation,  the  railroad  junctions,  and  the  cities  of 
France  was  handed  to  the  American  Red  Cross.  The  Red 
Cross  began  its  preparations  for  this  particular  part  of  its 
task  by  establishing  stations  for  the  French  Army,  which, 
pending  the  arrival  of  the  American  forces,  would  serve 
admirably  as  experiment  stations.  Major  Murphy  at  once 
conferred  with  the  French  military  authorities  and,  after 
finding  from  them  where  their  greatest  need  lay,  proceeded 
without  delay  to  the  establishment  of  model  canteens  on  the 
French  lines  of  communication;  in  the  metropolitan  zone 
of  Paris  and  at  the  front.  And  before  our  army  came,  and 
the  great  bulk  of  the  work  of  our  Red  Cross  naturally 
shifted  to  it,  these  early  canteens  supplied  rations  to  liter- 
ally millions  of  French  soldiers. 

"  In  view  of  keeping  up  the  good  spirits  of  troops  it  is 
indispensable  that  soldiers  on  leave  be  able  to  find,  while 
waiting  at  railroad  stations  in  the  course  of  their  journeys, 


106     WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

canteens  which  will  allow  them  to  have  comfortable  rest 
and  refreshment.  Good  results  have  already  been  obtained 
in  this  direction,  but  it  is  necessary  to  improve  the  can- 
teens already  existing  and  to  create  new  ones  in  stations 
that  do  not  already  have  them." 

The  above  is  a  translation  of  a  quotation  from  a  note 
written  by  the  French  Minister  of  War  to  a  general  of  his 
army,  at  about  the  time  of  our  first  Red  Cross  Commission 
over  there.  If  one  were  to  attempt  to  translate  between 
the  lines  he  would  be  certain  to  find  that  the  soldiers  going 
home  on  leave  or  discharge,  obliged  to  wait  long  hours  in 
railroad  stations,  sometimes  without  food  or  other  com- 
forts, and  ofttimes,  too,  forced  to  sleep  upon  a  cold,  stone- 
flagged  floor,  had  often  a  greatly  lowered  morale  as  the 
result  of  such  an  experience.  And  if  their  mental  state 
was  not  lowered,  their  physical  condition  was  almost  sure 
to  be. 

So  it  was  that  the  American  Eed  Cross  jumped  into  the 
immediate  assistance  of  its  rather  badly  burdened  French 
brothers  —  the  various  organizations  of  Croix  Rouge  Fran- 
gaise.  It  seized  as  its  most  immediate  opportunity,  Paris, 
and  particularly  the  junction  points  of  the  Grande  Cein- 
lure,  the  belt-line  railroad  which  completely  encircles  the 
outer  environs  of  the  city,  and  provides  track-interchange 
facilities  for  the  various  trunk-line  railroads  which  enter 
her  walls  from  every  direction.  For  lack  of  funds  and  a 
lack  of  personnel  the  French  Red  Cross  authorities  were 
about  to  close  some  of  the  canteens  which  they  already  had 
established  upon  the  Grande  Ceinture,  while  the  real  neces- 
sity was  that  more  should  be  opened.  Such  a  disaster  our 
American  Red  Cross  prevented.  On  July  18,  1917,  Colo- 
nel Payot,  Director  of  the  French  Army  Transports,  wrote 
to  H.  H.  Harjes  —  at  that  time  representative  of  the  Amer- 
ican Red  Cross  at  the  general  headquarters  of  the  French 
Army  —  giving  a  list  of  railroad  stations  where  canteens 
were  needed,  and  in  the  order  of  their  urgency.  In  the  cor- 
respondence which  followed  between  the  French  authorities 


THE  DOUGHBOY  MOVES  TOWARD  THE  FRONT       107 

and  the  American  Ked  Cross,  various  agreements  were 
reached. 

It  was  agreed  that  the  French  administration  would 
furnish  the  necessary  buildings  and  provide  electric  light, 
running  water,  and  coal  for  heating.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  American  Eed  Cross  undertook  to  furnish  all  other 
supplies  —  cooking  appliances,  coal  for  cooking,  equip- 
ment, stores,  medical  supplies,  and  personnel.  As  early 
as  July  31,  Major  Perkins  wrote  that  our  American  Eed 
Cross  was  now  ready  to  serve  a  full  meal  at  seventy-five 
centimes  (fourteen  or  fifteen  cents)  a  person,  and  other 
drinks  and  dishes  at  small  cost  to  the  poilu.  Men  without 
funds  on  receiving  a  voucher  from  the  Commissaire  de  la 
Gare  (railroad-station  agent)  could  obtain  meals  and  hot 
drinks  without  charge.  The  sale  of  wine,  beer,  and  spirits 
was  prohibited  in  our  canteens.  And  because  of  the  French 
cooperation  in  their  establishment,  they  were  named  Les 
Cantines  des  Deux  Drapeaux  and  bore  signs  showing  both 
the  Tricolor  of  France  and  our  own  Stars  and  Stripes, 
with  their  designating  name  beneath. 

The  original  list  of  outside  stations  suggested  by  the 
French  author ites  were  five  in  number:  Pont  d'Oye,  Chal- 
ons, fipernay,  Belfort,  and  Bar-le-Duc.  Finally  it  was  de- 
cided to  reduce  this  list  —  the  hour  of  the  arrival  of  the 
American  forces  in  number  steadily  drawing  nearer  —  and 
Chalons  and  fipernay  were  definitely  chosen  for  American 
Red  Cross  canteen  work.  At  that  time  both  of  these  cities 
of  the  Champagne  district  were  well  behind  the  lines ;  after- 
wards the  Germans  came  too  close  for  comfort  and  shelled 
them  badly,  which  meant  the  withdrawal  of  the  French 
troops  and  a  closing  of  the  neat  canteens  for  a  time;  but 
they  were  reopened.  When  I  visited  fipernay  in  January 
1919,  the  Red  Cross  canteen  there  was  again  open  and  in 
charge  of  two  young  ladies  from  Watertown,  N".  Y.  —  the 
Misses  Emma  and  Kate  Lansing,  sisters  of  the  then  Secre 
tary  of  State.  You  could  not  keep  down  the  buoyant  spiri 
of  our  Red  Cross. 


108     WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IK  FRANCE 

Before  the  American  Red  Cross  undertook  to  establish 
fully  equipped  canteens  —  on  the  scale  of  those  at  Chalons 
and  at  Epernay  —  the  London  Committee  of  the  French 
Red  Cross  had  been  operating  at  many  railroad  stations 
small  canteens  known  as  the  Gouttes  de  Cafe,  where 
coffee  and  bouillon  were  served  free  to  the  soldiers  in 
passing  trains.  In  several  cases  agreements  were  made 
with  the  French  society  by  which  certain  individual 
Gouttes  de  Cafe  passed  to  the  control  of  the  American  Red 
Cross  and  were,  in  other  cases,  absorbed  in  the  larger  in- 
stallation which  it  was  prepared  to  support.  This,  how- 
ever, took  place  only  when  the  demands  of  the  situation 
really  called  for  a  larger  canteen,  prepared  to  serve  full 
meals  and  operate  dormitories  and  a  recreation  room.  Oc- 
casionally it  was  found  advisable  for  our  Red  Cross  to 
inaugurate  a  canteen  of  its  very  own,  while  the  Goutte  de 
Cafe  continued  to  carry  on  its  own  work  on  the  station  plat- 
form or  in  the  immediate  vicinity. 

I  remember  particularly  the  situation  in  the  great  cen- 
tral station  of  the  Midi  Railroad  in  Bordeaux.  This  huge 
structure  is  a  real  focal  point  of  passenger  traffic.  From 
beneath  its  expansive  train  shed  trains  come  and  go ;  to  and 
from  Paris  and  Boulogne  and  Biarritz  and  Marseilles  and 
many  other  points  —  over  the  busy  lines,  not  only  of 
the  Midi,  but  of  the  Paris-Orleans  and  the  Etat.  A  great 
proportion  of  this  traffic  is  military,  and  long  ago  the 
French  Red  Cross  sought  to  accommodate  this  with  a  huge 
Goutte  de  Cafe  in  a  barnlike  sort  of  room  in  the  main  sta- 
tion structure  and  opening  direct  upon  its  platforms.  I 
glanced  at  this  place.  It  was  gloomy  and  ill-lighted  by  the 
uncertain,  even  though  dazzling,  glow  of  one  or  two  electric 
arc  lights.  It  was  fearfully  overcrowded.  Poilus  oc- 
cupied each  of  the  many  seats  in  the  room  and  flowed  over 
to  the  floor,  where  they  sat  or  reclined  as  best  they  might 
on  the  benches  or  on  their  luggage.  The  place  was  ill- 
ventilated,  too.  It  was  not  one  that  offered  large  appeal. 

How  different  the  appearance  of  the  canteen  of  our  own 


THE  DOUGHBOY  MOVES  TOWARD  THE  FRONT       109 

Red  Cross.  It  had  a  far  less  advantageous  location ;  well 
cutside  the  station  train  shed  and  only  to  be  found  by  one 
who  was  definitely  directed  to  it.  Two  buildings  had  been 
erected  and  another  adapted  for  the  canteen.  They  were 
plain  enough  outside,  but  inside  they  were  typically  Amer- 
ican —  which  meant  that  light  and  color  and  warmth  had 
been  combined  effectively  to  produce  the  effect  of  a  home 
that  might  have  been  in  Maine,  or  Ohio,  or  Colorado,  or 
California,  or  any  other  nice  corner  of  the  old  U.  S.  A. 
There  was  homelike  atmosphere,  too,  in  the  long,  low  build- 
ings enhanced  by  the  unforgetable  aroma  of  coffee  being 
made  —  being  made  American  style,  if  you  please.  That 
building  boasted  a  long  counter,  and  upon  the  counter 
miniature  mountains  of  ham  sandwiches  and  big  brown 
doughnuts  —  sandwiches  and  doughnuts  which  actually 
had  been  fabricated  from  white  flour  —  and  ham  sand- 
wiches with  a  genuine  flavor  to  them.  And  all  in  great 
quantity  —  2,000  meals  in  a  single  day  was  no  unusual 
order  —  and  for  a  price  that  was  nominal,  to  put  it  lightly. 
In  another  building  there  were  more  of  the  lights  and 
the  warm  yellows  and  greens  of  good  taste  in  decoration ; 
a  big  piano  with  a  doughboy  at  it  some  twenty-three  hours 
out  of  the  twenty-four  —  whole  companies  of  divans  and 
regiments  of  easy-chairs:  American  newspapers,  many 
weekly  publications,  a  lot  of  magazines,  and  books  in  pro- 
fusion. The  room  was  completely  filled,  but  somehow  one 
did  not  gain  the  sensation  of  its  being  crowded.  The  feel- 
ing that  one  carried  from  the  place  was  that  a  bit  of  the 
U.  S.  A.  had  been  set  right  down  there  at  the  corner  of 
the  great  and  busy  chief  railway  terminal  of  the  French 
city  of  Bordeaux.  Only  one  forgot  Bordeaux. 

What  was  done  at  Bordeaux  —  and  also  at  St.  Nazaire 
and  Nantes  and  Brest  and  Tours  and  Toul  and  many, 
many  other  points  —  by  our  Red  Cross  in  the  provision  of 
canteen  facilities  was  repeated  in  Paris,  only  on  a  far 
larger  scale  than  at  any  other  point.  The  A.  R.  C.  L.  0.  C. 


110     WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

canteens  in  Paris  —  there  seems  to  be  no  holding  in  check 
that  army  passion  for  initialization  —  soon  after  the  sign- 
ing of  the  armistice  had  reached  fourteen  in  number,  of 
which  about  half  were  located  in  or  close  to  the  great  rail- 
road passenger  terminals  of  the  city.  The  others  were 
hotels,  large  or  small,  devoted  in  particular  to  the  housing 
of  the  doughboy  and  his  officers  on  the  occasions  of  their 
leaves  to  the  capital  —  for  no  other  point  in  France,  not 
even  the  attractions  of  Biarritz  or  the  sunny  Riviera,  can 
ever  quite  fill  the  place  in  the  heart  of  the  man  in  khaki 
that  Paris,  with  all  her  refinements  and  her  infinite  variety 
of  amusements,  long  since  attained.  These  last  canteens 
we  shall  consider  in  greater  detail  when  we  come  to  find 
our  doughboy  on  leave.  For  the  present  we  are  seeing  him 
still  bound  for  the  front,  the  war  still  in  action,  the  great 
adventure  still  ahead. 

A  single  glance  at  the  records  of  the  organization  of  the 
Army  and  Navy  Department  under  which  the  canteen 
work  along  the  lines  of  communication  is  grouped  at  the 
Paris  headquarters  of  the  American  Red  Cross,  shows  that 
it  was  not  until  February,  1918,  that  the  inrush  of  the 
American  Army  in  France  had  assumed  proportions  ample 
enough  to  demand  a  segregation  of  canteen  accommodations 
for  it  from  those  offered  to  the  poilus.  As  I  have  said,  the 
canteens  for  the  poilus  were  in  the  general  nature  of  train- 
ing or  experimental  stations  for  our  really  big  canteen  job 
over  there,  and  as  such  more  than  justified  the  trouble  or 
the  cost;  which  does  not  take  into  the  reckoning  the  valu- 
able service  which  they  rendered  the  blue-clad  soldiers  of 
our  great  and  loyal  friend  —  the  French  Republic. 

Take  Chalons,  for  instance:  Chalons  set  an  American 
Red  Cross  standard  for  canteens,  particularly  for  such 
canteens  as  would  have  to  take  care  of  the  physical  needs 
and  comforts  of  soldiers,  perhaps  in  great  numbers.  This 
early  Red  Cross  station  was  set  in  a  large  barracks  some 
fifty  yards  distant  from  the  chief  railroad  terminal  of  that 
busy  town.  And,  as  it  often  happened  that  the  leave  per- 


THE  DOUGHBOY  MOVES  TOWARD  THE  FRONT       111 

mits  of  the  poilus  did  not  permit  them  to  go  into  the  town, 
a  fenced  passage,  with  a  sentinel,  was  builded  from  the 
train  platforms  to  the  canteen  entrance.  At  that  entrance, 
a  coat  room  where  the  soldier  could  check  his  bulky  kit 
was  established. 

On  going  into  the  restaurant  of  the  canteen  one  quickly 
discovered  that  what  might  otherwise  have  been  a  dull  and 
dreary  barracks'  interior  had  been  transformed  by  French 
artists  —  the  French  have  a  marvelous  knack  for  doing  this 
very  sort  of  thing  —  into  a  light,  cheerful,  and  amusing 
room.  The  effect  on  the  poilus  who  visited  it  for  the  first 
time  was  instantaneous;  they  had  not  been  used  to  that 
sort  of  thing. 

At  one  end  of  the  gay  and  happy  room  was  the  counter 
from  which  the  meals  were  served  by  the  American  women 
working  in  the  canteen.  The  soldier  went  first  to  the 
cashier  and  from  her  bought  either  a  ticket  for  a  complete 
meal,  or  for  any  special  dish  that  might  appeal  to  his 
fancy  or  to  his  jaded  appetite.  He  then  went  to  the 
counter,  was  handed  his  food  on  a  tray,  and  took  it  to  one 
of  the  clean,  white-tiled  tables  that  lined  the  room.  Groups 
of  friends  might  gather  at  a  table.  But  no  one  was  long 
alone,  unless  he  chose  to  be.  Friendships  are  made  quickly 
in  the  spirit  of  such  a  place,  and  the  chatter  and  laughter 
that  pervaded  it  reflected  the  gayety  of  its  decorations. 

After  eating,  if  it  was  still  summer,  the  poilu  might 
stroll  in  the  garden  where  there  were  seats,  a  pergola,  even 
a  Punch  and  Judy  Theater  —  for  your  Frenchman,  be  he 
Parisian  or  peasant,  dearly  loves  his  guignol  —  or  he  might 
find  his  way  to  the  recreation  room,  where  there  were  writ- 
ing materials,  games,  magazines,  lounging  chairs,  a  piano 
and  a  victrola.  Here  men  might  group  around  the  piano 
and  sing  to  their  hearts'  content.  And  here  the  popularity 
of  Madelon  was  quite  unquestioned. 

And  after  all  of  this  was  done,  he  might  retire  to  the 
dormitories  with  absolute  assurance  that  he  would  be  called 
in  full  time  for  his  train  —  whether  that  train  left  at  one 


112     WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

o'clock  in  the  morning  or  at  four.  And  if  he  so  chose,  in 
the  morning  might  refresh  himself  in  the  fully  equipped 
washrooms,  shower  baths,  or  the  barher  shop,  have  his 
coffee  and  eggs,  his  fruit  and  his  beloved  confiture  and  go 
aboard  the  train  in  the  full  spirit  of  a  man  at  complete 
peace  with  the  world. 

The  orders  that  came  in  February,  1918,  calling  for  the 
segregation  of  the  accommodations  for  the  A.  E.  F.  from 
those  given  to  the  French,  did  not  result  in  withdrawing 
financial  support  from  Chalons  and  the  other  canteens 
which  our  Red  Cross  had  established  particularly  for  the 
poilus,  but  did  result  in  the  establishment  of  rest  stations, 
or  canteens,  exclusively  for  our  own  men.  This  organiza- 
tion of  canteens  extended  particularly  along  the  lines  of 
communication  between  the  area  of  action  and  the  Service 
of  Supplies  zone,  and  was  quite  distinct  from  the  canteen 
organizations  at  the  ports  and  the  evacuation  hospitals; 
these  last  we  shall  come  to  consider  when  we  see  the  part 
played  by  our  Red  Cross  in  the  entire  hospital  program 
of  the  A.  E.  F.  The  Lines  of  Communication  task  was  a 
real  job  in  itself. 

One  could  hardly  rub  the  side  of  a  magic  lamp  and  have 
a  completely  equipped  canteen  materialize  as  the  fulfill- 
ment of  a  wish.  Magic  lamps  have  not  been  particularly 
numerous  in  France  these  last  few  years.  If  they  had 
been  France  might  have  been  spared  at  least  some  of  her 
great  burden  of  sorrow.  And  so,  even  for  our  resourceful 
Red  Cross,  buildings  could  not  always  be  provided,  nor 
chairs,  nor  counters,  nor  even  stoves.  That  is  why  at 
Vierzon,  a  little  but  a  very  busy  railroad  junction  near 
Severs,  there  was,  for  many  months,  only  a  tent.  But  for 
each  dawn  of  all  those  months  there  was  the  cheering  aroma 
of  fresh  coffee  steaming  up  into  the  air  from  six  marmites, 
as  the  French  know  our  giant  coffee  containers.  And  the 
figures  of  American  girls  could  be  seen  silhouetted  against 
the  glow  of  bonfires,  while  the  line  of  soldiers,  cups  in 


THE  DOUGHBOY  MOVES  TOWARD  THE  FRONT       113 

hand,  which  started  at  that  early  hour,  would  continue  for 
at  least  another  eighteen,  or  until  well  after  midnight 

Bemember,  if  you  will,  that  making  coffee  for  a  canteen 
is  not  making  it  for  a  household  dining  room.  One  does 
not  measure  it  by  teaspoonfuls.  It  is  an  affair  of  pounds 
and  of  gallons.  The  water  —  ten  gallons  for  each  marmite 
—  was  procured  from  a  well  which  had  been  tested  and  ad- 
judged pure.  The  sandwiches,  with  their  fillings  of  meat 
or  of  jelly,  were  not  the  dainty  morsels  which  women 
crumble  between  their  fingers  at  bridge  parties.  They 
were  sandwiches  fit  for  fighting  men.  They  were  the  sort 
that  hungry  soldiers  could  grip  with  their  teeth. 

Because  of  the  necessary  secrecy  in  reference  to  the  exact 
numbers  of  passing  troops,  in  turn  because  of  military 
necessities,  the  American  Bed  Cross  was  not  permitted 
during  the  war  to  keep  an  exact  record  of  the  number  of 
men  who  visited  its  canteens.  But  where  hundreds  were 
accommodated,  even  at  as  comparatively  small  a  place  as 
Vierzon,  thousands  were  fed  at  the  larger  places,  such  as 
Dijon  or  Toul,  for  instance.  And  it  is  to  be  noted  that  in 
all  these  canteens  food  was  being  served  to  regular  detach- 
ments of  the  A.  E.  F.  as  well  as  to  casuals  leaving  or  re- 
joining their  commands. 

In  the  great  September  drive  of  1918  a  canteen  was  set 
up  by  the  roadside  at  Souilly.  Night  and  day  and  without 
intermission  it  was  maintained.  It  was  there  that 
stretcher  bearers  and  ambulance  drivers  were  given  hot 
drinks  and  warm  food  —  all  that  they  wanted  of  both  — 
and  where  sometimes  they  toppled  over  from  sheer  fatigue 
and  wearied  nerves.  From  this  one  tent  —  and  this  is  but 
one  instance  typical  of  many,  many  others  —  three  hun- 
dred gallons  of  chocolate  were  served  daily.  And  while 
bread  was  procured  with  the  utmost  difficulty,  no  boy  was 
turned  away  hungry.  Many  times  the  snacks  of  food  so 
offered  were,  according  to  the  statements  of  the  soldiers 
themselves,  the  first  food  that  they  had  received  for  three 
days. 


114  WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

And  whether  the  canteen  of  our  Red  Cross  was  in  a  tent 
or  a  pine  structure  with  splintery  and  badly  put  together 
walls,  or,  as  ofttimes  it  was,  in  the  corner  of  a  baggage 
room  of  a  railroad  station,  an  attempt  was  always  made  to 
beautify  it.  We  learned  several  things  from  the  French 
since  first  we  moved  a  part  of  America  into  their  be- 
loved land,  and  this  was  one  of  them.  The  example  of  the 
Chalons  canteen  was  not  lost.  There  is  a  psychological 
effect  in  decorative  beauty  that  is  quite  unmistakable; 
translated  it  has  a  definite  and  very  real  effect  upon  that 
important  thing  that  all  really  great  army  generals  of 
to-day  know  as  morale.  It  was  the  desire  for  good  morale, 
therefore,  that  prompted  the  women  of  our  Red  Cross  to 
decorate  their  canteens.  And  because  skilled  decorative 
artists  were  not  always  at  hand,  as  they  were  as  Chalons, 
makeshifts  —  ingenious  ones  at  that  —  were  often  used. 
Magazine  covers  could  be  fashioned  into  mighty  fine  wall 
posters.  In  some  instances,  camouflage  artists  and  their 
varied  paint  pots  were  called  into  service.  For  window 
curtains  materials  of  gay  colors  were  always  chosen  and, 
wherever  it  was  possible,  the  lights  were  covered  with 
fancy  shades,  designed  according  to  the  individual  taste  or 
the  ingenuity  of  some  worker. 

Pianos  were  dug  out  of  ruined  houses  or  were  even 
brought  from  captured  German  dugouts.  A  boche  piano 
served  as  well  as  any  other  for  the  "  jazz  "  which  we  took 
to  poor  France  from  the  United  States.  The  pianos  in 
these  Red  Cross  canteens  hardly  would  have  passed  muster 
for  a  formal  concert.  But  that  did  not  matter  much.  It 
mattered  not  that  they  had  the  toothless  look  of  old  age 
about  them,  where  the  ivory  keys  had  been  lost ;  they  were 
still  something  which  a  homeless  Yankee  boy  might  play 
—  where  he  might  still  build  for  himself  a  bridge  of 
favorite  tunes  right  back  into  the  heart  of  his  own  beloved 
home. 

At  Issoudon,  the  canteen  reached  an  ideal  of  organiza- 
tion not  always  possible  in  some  more  isolated  spots.  At 


THE  DOUGHBOY  MOVES  TOWARD  THE  FRONT      115 

that  point  there  was  a  mess  for  officers,  a  canteen  for 
enlisted  men,  and  clubrooms  with  books  and  the  like  for 
both.  Moreover,  a  resthouse  was  inaugurated  for  officers 
and  men  by  the  Eed  Cross  for  the  accommodation  of  those 
who  stayed  there  overnight  or  even  for  a  considerable  num- 
ber of  hours.  Eventually  this  last  project  was  absorbed  by 
the  army,  which  took  it  under  its  direct  control.  The  army 
knew  a  good  thing  when  it  saw  it.  The  Issoudon  rest- 
house  was  a  good  thing.  It  served  as  a  model  for  a  much 
more  elaborate  scheme  of  entertainment  for  our  khaki- 
coated  men  which,  at  a  later  time,  was  established  by  the 
American  Red  Cross  in  Paris.  And  which  —  so  far  at 
least  as  the  officers  were  concerned  —  also  was  taken  over 
by  the  army. 

"  A  piece  of  fairyland  "  was  the  name  that  a  doughboy 
with  a  touch  of  sentiment  gave  to  the  canteen  at  Nevers. 
A  gardener's  lodge  attached  to  a  chateau  was  loaned  the 
American  Red  Cross  by  a  titled  and  generous  lady.  It  pos- 
sessed a  "  living  room  "  and  a  dining  room  that  needed  few 
changes,  even  of  a  decorative  order.  Upon  the  veranda, 
which  commanded  a  view  of  a  gentle  and  seemingly  peren- 
nial garden,  were  many  easy-chairs,  while  somewhere  among 
these  same  hardy  flowers  was  builded  a  temporary  barracks 
for  the  housing  of  casuals  and  for  shower  baths  for  the 
cleanly  comfort  of  the  guests. 

In  the  course  of  my  own  travels  through  the  Red  Cross 
areas  in  Europe  I  came  to  another  canteen  center  other  than 
that  of  the  Bordeaux  district,  which  still  clings  to  my  mem- 
ory. I  am  referring  to  Toul,  that  ancient  walled  city  of 
eastern  France  which  has  been  a  great  fortress  for  so  many 
centuries  that  mortal  man  seems  fairly  to  have  lost  count 
of  them.  Eew  doughboys  there  are  who  traveled  at  all 
across  the  land  of  the  lilies  who  can  easily  forget  Toul  — 
that  grim  American  army  headquarters  close  by  its  stone 
walls  and  ancient  gates,  a  marais  of  tight-set  buildings 
and  narrow  stone-paved  streets  and  encircled  by  a  row 


116  WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

of  hills,  which  bore  a  row  of  fortresses.  If  the  line  had 
failed  to  hold  at  Verdun  or  at  Pont-a-Mousson,  Toul 
would  certainly  have  become  the  next  great  battle  ground, 
another  gray  city  for  which  men  might  give  their  short 
lives  in  order  that  it  might  continue  its  long  one. 

This  "  if  "  was  not  realized  —  thank  God  for  that ! 
And  the  French,  with  their  real  generosity,  realizing  that 
the  American  headquarters  in  their  eastern  territory  must 
be  a  city  of  great  accessibility  and  real  military  strategic 
importance,  quickly  tendered  Toul,  which  was  accepted  by 
our  army  in  the  same  generous  spirit  in  which  it  was 
offered  by  our  Allies. 

With  Toul  settled  as  a  military  center  the  problem  of 
the  Red  Cross  in  connection  with  it  at  once  became  definite 
and  important.  It,  of  course,  demanded  immediate  as 
well  as  entirely  comprehensive  solution.  And  that  it  had 
both  was  due  very  largely  to  the  efforts  of  one  woman,  Miss 
Mary  Vail  Andress,  of  New  York. 

Miss  Andress,  who  was  one  of  the  very  first  group  of 
women  to  be  sent  by  our  Red  Cross  to  France,  arriving 
there  August  24,  1917,  came  to  Toul  in  January,  1918, 
Captain  Hugh  Pritchitt,  who  had  been  assigned  to  the 
command  of  the  American  Red  Cross  work  at  that  Ameri- 
can Army  headquarters  point,  already  of  great  and  growing 
importance,  had  preceded  her  there  by  but  four  days,  yet 
had  already  succeeded  in  making  a  definite  survey  of  the 
entire  situation.  Out  of  that  survey,  and  the  more  ex- 
tended knowledge  of  the  problem  that  came  to  the  Red  Cross 
folk  as  they  studied  it  in  its  details,  came  the  big  canteen 
activities.  For  before  the  American  Red  Cross  had  been 
in  the  ancient  French  town  a  full  fortnight,  the  men  of  the 
American  Expeditionary  Forces  began  pouring  through  it 
in  great  numbers.  It  takes  only  a  single  glance  at  the  map 
to  realize  the  reason  why ;  for  to  the  east  of  Toul  are  Nancy, 
Pont-a-Mousson,  and  the  Lorraine  line,  while  to  the  north 
and  even  a  little  to  the  west  one  finds  Saint  Mihiel,  Ver- 
dun, St.  Menehold,  and  the  Argonne  —  places  that  already 


THE  DOUGHBOY  MOVES  TOWARD  THE  FRONT       117 

are  household  names  all  the  way  across  America,  while 
from  Toul  to  the  south  and  west,  even  unto  the  blue  waters 
of  the  Atlantic,  stretch  the  main  stems  of  the  United 
States  Military  Railroad  in  France  —  that  remarkable 
railroad  which,  as  you  already  know,  really  is  no  railroad 
whatsover. 

So  do  not  wonder  that  at  the  ancient  railway  station  just 
north  of  the  town  walls  and  contiguous  to  the  well-traveled 
Route  de  Paris,  1918  saw  more  and  more  of  the  long  special 
trains  stopping  and  debouching  boys  in  khaki  —  hungry 
boys,  thirsty  boys,  tired  and  dirty  boys,  and  no  provision 
for  the  relief  of  any  of  these  ordinary  human  miseries. 

It  was  a  real  situation,  and  as  such  the  New  York  woman 
in  the  steel  gray  Red  Cross  uniform  quickly  sensed  it. 
She  moved  toward  its  solution ;  which  was  easier  said  than 
done.  For  one  thing  the  Red  Cross  chiefs  in  Paris,  con- 
sidering the  thing  judiciously  from  long  range,  were  not  at 
all  sure  of  its  practicability.  But  Miss  Andress  had  no 
doubts,  and  so  persisted  at  Paris  until  Paris  yielded  and 
permission  was  granted  her  to  start  a  small  canteen ;  yet 
this  was  only  the  first  step  in  the  solution  of  her  problem. 
A  second  and  even  greater  one  was  the  securing  of  a 
location  for  canteen  facilities.  The  meager  facilities  of 
Toul,  selected  as  the  field  headquarters  of  an  American 
Army,  had  been  all  but  swamped  by  the  fearful  demands 
made  upon  them.  Yet  Miss  Andress,  moving  heaven  and 
earth  itself,  did  secure  a  small  apartment  house  in  that 
same  well-traveled  Route  de  Paris,  which  was  well  enough, 
so  far  as  it  went,  but  did  not  go  half  far  enough.  She 
quickly  determined  that  this  building  would  serve  very 
well  as  a  hotel  or  resthouse  for  the  casual  soldiers  and 
officers  passing  through  the  town,  but  that  the  real  canteen 
would  have  to  be  right  at  the  station  itself. 

Now  the  station  of  the  Eastern  Railway  at  Toul  was 
amply  large  for  the  ordinary  peace-time  needs  of  the 
eleven  thousand  folk  who  lived  in  the  town,  but  long  since 
its  modest  facilities  had  also  been  swamped  by  the  war- 


118  WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

time  necessities  thrust  upon  it.  It  was  humanly  impossi- 
ble to  crowd  another  single  facility  within  its  four  tight 
brick  walls.  They  told  her  as  much. 

"  I  know  that,"  said  Miss  Andress  quietly.  "  We  shall 
have  to  have  a  big  tent  set  up  in  the  station  yard.  I 
spall  speak  to  the  railway  authorites  about  it,  and  gain 
their  permission." 

In  vain  the  army  officers  argued  with  her  as  to  the 
futility  of  such  a  step.  They,  themselves,  had  thought  of 
such  procedure  for  their  own  increasing  activities,  but 
had  been  refused  a  tent,  very  politely  but  very  firmly. 
Yet  those  refusals  were  not  final.  There  were  two  other 
factors  now  to  be  taken  into  consideration  —  one  was  the 
potency  of  the  very  phrase,  Croix  Rouge  Americaine,  with 
the  French,  and  the  other  was  the  persuasive  ability  of 
a  bright  New  York  woman  who,  having  made  up  her  mind 
what  it  was  that  she  wanted  to  get,  was  not  going  to  be 
happy  until  she  had  gotten  it. 

She  got  the  tent  —  the  permission  and  all  else  that  went 
with  the  getting  it  up,  of  course.  In  the  spring  of  1919 
it  still  was  there,  although  in  use  as  a  check  room  instead 
of  a  canteen;  for  the  canteen  service  long  before  had  out- 
grown even  its  generous  facilities.  It  spread  in  various 
directions;  into  a  regular  hotel  for  enlisted  men,  right 
across  the  narrow  street  from  the  station;  a  resthouse  for 
both  officers  and  enlisted  men  back  on  the  Route  de  Paris 
about  a  block  distant;  a  huge  new  canteen  on  the  station 
grounds,  and  still  another  on  one  of  the  long  island-plat- 
forms between  the  tracks,  so  that  men  held  in  passing  trains 
—  all  of  which  stopped  at  Toul  for  coal  and  water,  if  noth- 
ing else  —  and  so  unable  to  go  even  into  the  station  to  feel 
the  comforting  hand  of  the  Red  Cross,  might  be  served  with 
good  things  of  both  food  and  drink. 

To  maintain  four  such  great  institutions,  even  though 
all  of  them  were  within  stone's  throw  of  one  another,  was 
no  child's  play.  The  mere  problem  of  providing  those  good 
things  to  eat  and  drink  was  of  itself  a  really  huge  job. 


THE  DOUGHBOY  MOVES  TOWARD  THE  FRONT       119 

For  by  January,! 9 19,  in  the  sandwich  room  of  the  enlisted 
men's  hotel  across  the  street,  2,400  pounds  of  bread  a  day 
were  being  cut  into  sandwiches.  These  sandwiches  were 
worthy  of  investigation.  They  were  really  worth-while  — 
the  Red  Cross  kind.  I  have  sampled  them  myself  —  all 
the  way  from  Havre  to  Coblenz  and  south  as  far  as  Bor- 
deaux, and  so  truthfully  can  call  them  remarkable.  For 
fancy,  if  you  can,  corned  beef  —  the  miserable  and  de- 
spised "  corn  willie  "  of  the  doughboy  —  being  so  cam- 
ouflaged with  pickles  and  onions  and  eggs  as  to  make  many 
and  many  a  traveling  hungry  soldier  for  the  nonce  quite 
unaware  that  he  was  munching  upon  a  foodstuff  of  un- 
bridled army  ridicule.  And  ham,  with  mustard,  and  more 
of  the  palatable  camouflage.  Oh,  boy,  could  you  beat  it  ? 
And,  oh,  boy,  did  you  ever  eat  better  doughnuts  —  out- 
side of  mother's,  of  course  —  than  those  of  the  Red  Cross, 
and  the  Salvation  Army,  too,  gave  you  ? 

In  the  big  kitchen  of  the  American  Red  Cross  canteen 
hotel  at  Toul  they  cooked  three  thousand  of  these  last  each 
twenty-four  hours,  which  would  have  been  a  sizable  contract 
for  one  of  those  white-fronted  chains  of  dairy  restaurants 
whose  habitat  is  New  York  and  the  other  big  cities  of  the 
United  States,  while  four  thousand  cups  of  coffee  and 
chocolate  went  daily  to  wash  down  these  doughnuts  — 
and  the  sandwiches. 

Figures  are  not  always  impressive.  In  this  one  instance, 
however,  I  think  that  they  are  particularly  so.  Is  it  not 
impressive  to  know  that  in  a  single  day  of  September, 
1918,  when  the  tide  of  war  had  turned  and  the  oncoming 
hosts  of  Yanks  were  turning  the  flanks  of  the  boche  farther 
and  farther  back,  ground  once  lost  never  to  be  regained  — 
in  the  eight  hours  of  that  day,  from  five  o'clock  in  the 
morning  until  one  o'clock  in  the  afternoon,  just  2,045  men 
were  served  by  the  American  Red .  Cross  there  at  the  Toul 
station,  while  in  the  month  of  January,  1919,  just 
128,637  hungry  soldiers  were  fed  and  refreshed  there  ? 

Figures  do  not,  of  course,  tell  the  story  of  the  resthouse 


120  WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

—  that  apartment  home  first  secured  by  Miss  Andress  — 
but  the  expressions  of  gratefulness  that  come  from  the  for- 
tunate folk  who  have  been  sheltered  beneath  its  hospitable 
roof  are  more  than  ordinarily  eloquent.  It  is  not  a  large 
building;  a  structure  rather  ugly  than  otherwise.  But 
it  has  spelled  in  every  true  sense  of  the  word:  "Rest." 
Yet  to  my  mind  its  really  unique  distinction  lies  in  another 
channel;  it  is  the  only  army  facility  that  I  chanced  to 
see  in  all  France  which  extended  its  hospitality  under  a 
single  roof  to  both  officer  and  enlisted  man,  and  so  be- 
spoke a  democracy  which,  much  vaunted  at  times,  does 
not  always  exist  within  the  ranks  of  the  United  States 
Army.  For  so  far  as  I  could  discover,  there  was  not  the 
slightest  particle  of  difference  in  the  cleanliness  and  com- 
fort between  the  beds  assigned  to  the  enlisted  men  in  the 
upper  floor  of  the  house  and  those  given  to  the  officers  in 
its  two  lower  floors.  When  they  passed  its  threshold  the 
fine  distinction  of  rank  ceased.  The  Red  Cross  in  its  very 
best  phases  does  not  recognize  the  so-called  distinction  of 
rank. 

Its  hospitality  at  Toul  did  not  cease  when  it  had  offered 
food  and  drink  and  lodging  to  the  man  in  khaki  who  came 
to  its  doors.  A  very  humble  yet  greatly  appreciated 
comfort  to  a  man  coming  off  a  hot,  overcrowded,  and 
very  dirty  troop  train  was  nothing  more  nor  less  than  a 
good  bath.  The  bathhouse  was  a  hurried  but  well-adapted 
one  in  the  basement  of  the  enlisted  men's  hotel.  Two 
Russian  refugees  ran  the  plant  and  did  well  at  it  — 
for  Russian  refugees.  A  system  was  adopted,  despite 
Slavic  traditions,  by  which  at  a  single  time  sixteen  men 
might  be  undressing,  sixteen  taking  a  quarter-hour  bath, 
and  a  third  sixteen  dressing  again  —  all  at  the  same 
time.  In  this  way  250  men  could  bathe  in  a  single 
hour,  while  the  daily  average  of  the  institution  during 
the  busy  months  of  the  war  ordinarily  ran  from  eight 
hundred  to  nine  hundred.  It  has  handled  1,200  in  a 


THE  DOUGHBOY  MOVES  TOWARD  THE  FRONT      121 

single  working  day,  giving  the  men  not  only  a  bath,  hot 
or  cold,  as  might  be  desired,  but  a  complete  change  of 
clean  underclothing  —  all  with  the  compliments  of  the 
Red  Cross.  The  discarded  garments  were  gathered  in 
huge  sacks,  some  twenty-five  of  these  being  forwarded 
daily  to  the  army  laundries  in  the  neighborhood. 

"  The  Red  Cross  in  Toul  ?  "  said  a  young  lieutenant  of 
engineers  one  day  to  Miss  Gladys  Harrison,  who  was 
working  there  for  the  American  Red  Cross.  "  It  saved  my 
life  one  forlorn  night.  Every  hotel  in  town  was  full  to  the 
doors,  it  was  raining  bullets  outside  and  no  place  to  sleep 
but  the  banks  of  the  canal,  if  —  if  the  Red  Cross  hadn't 
taken  me  in." 

Let  Miss  Harrison  continue  the  story;  she  was  ex- 
tremely conversant  with  the  entire  situation  in  Toul,  and 
so  most  capable  to  speak  of  it. 

"  It  was  the  hour  of  tea  when  the  young  man  came  in. 
In  fresh  white  coif  and  apron  of  blue,  a  Red  Cross  girl 
presided  behind  the  altar  of  the  sacred  institution,  where 
the  pot  simmered  and  lemon  and  sugar  graced  the  brew. 
In  a  charmed  circle  around  the  attractively  furnished  room 
which,  among  its  other  attractions,  boasted  a  piano,  a 
pretty  reading  lamp,  and  a  writing  desk,  sat  some  fifteen 
other  officers  —  most  of  them  dusty  and  tired  from  long 
traveling,  some  shy,  some  talkative,  two  gray-bearded,  most 
of  them  mere  boys,  all  warming  themselves  in  the  civilizing 
atmosphere  of  the  subtle  ceremony.  On  the  table  piled  on 
a  generous  dinner  plate  was  the  marvel  on  which  the  young 
lieutenant's  eyes  rested  —  doughnuts. 

"  Forty-eight  thousand,  nine  hundred  and  ninety-five 
doughnuts.  Not  to  be  sure,  all  on  that  dinner  plate  — 
the  great  number  is  that  of  the  doughnuts  officially  stirred 
up,  dropped  in  deep  fat,  and  distributed  from  the  Red 
Cross  houses  and  station  canteens  during  the  month  of 
July,  1918.  Other  good  things  were  served  in  a  similar 
abundance  that  same  month ;  19,760  hot  and  cold  drinks, 


122     WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

13,546  sandwiches,  and  19,574  tartines,  not  to  mention 
2,460  salads  and  4,160  dishes  of  ice  cream  —  these  last,  of 
course,  special  hot-weather  foods.  But  the  doughnuts  were 
the  pride  and  glory  of  the  Toul  establishment  —  the  mas- 
terpiece by  which  its  praises  were  known  and  sung  in  the 
long  trenches  that  scarred  the  fair  Lorraine  hills.  They 
were  the  real  American  article  —  except  also  for  the  tradi- 
tional rolling  in  the  sugar  barrel,  now  vanished  like  the 
dodo  —  soft  and  golden  and  winningly  round.  They  were 
made  by  a  Frenchwoman,  but  her  instructor  was  a  genuine 
Yankee  soldier  cook,  who  learned  the  art  from  his  mother 
in  the  Connecticut  Valley,  where  they  cherish  the  secret 
of  why  the  doughnut  has  a  hole.  He  was  particularly 
detailed  to  initiate  the  Frenchwoman  into  the  mysteries 
of  the  art  by  an  army  colonel  who  understood  doughnuts 
and  men  and  who  sat  at  tea  with  the  directress  one  day 
when  the  Red  Cross  outpost  at  Toul  still  was  young." 

The  directress  was,  of  course,  Miss  Andress,  and  it  was 
in  those  early  days  she  still  was  the  staff  and  the  staff 
was  the  directress;  and  never  dreaming  of  the  summer 
nights  when  her  commodious  resthouse  in  the  Eoute  de 
Paris,  with  its  accommodations  for  eight  men  and  twenty- 
five  officers,  would  be  called  upon  in  a  single  short  month 
to  take  care  of  560  officers  and  2,124  enlisted  men  —  and 
would  take  care  of  every  blessed  one  of  them  to  the  fullest 
extent. 

Enough  again  of  figures.  At  the  best  they  tell  only  part 
of  the  story.  The  boys  who  enjoyed  the  multifold  hospi- 
talities of  the  Red  Cross  in  Toul  —  that  quaint,  walled, 
and  moated  fortress  town  of  old  France,  with  its  churches 
and  its  exquistite  cathedral  rising  above  its  low  roofs  — 
could  tell  the  rest  of  it ;  and  gladly  did  when  the  opportu- 
nity was  given  them.  For  instance  here  is  a  human  doc- 
ument which  came  into  my  hands  one  day  when  I  was  at 
the  Toul  canteen: 


THE  DOUGHBOY  MOVES  TOWARD  THE  FRONT      123 

"Dear  Red  Cross  Girls  at  the  Canteen: 

"I  always  wanted  to  tell  you  how  I  appreciated  all  the  nice 
things  you  have  done  for  us  since  I  have  been  over  here  and 
would  have,  but  perhaps  you'd  think  I  was  making  love  to  you 
for  I  felt  I  wanted  to  get  you  in  a  great  big  bunch  and  give  you 
a  great  big  hug.  No,  I  wouldn't  need  any  moonlight  and 
shivery  music,  for  it  isn't  that  kind  of  a  hug  —  the  kind  of  hug 
I  wanted  to  give  is  the  kind  a  brother  gives  his  sister;  or  a  boy 
gives  his  mother  when  he  wants  her  to  know  that  he  loves  her 
and  appreciates  her.  .  .  .  You  girls  are  for  the  boys  of  the  fight- 
ing power  and  you  don't  ask  any  questions  and  you  don't  bestow 
any  special  favors  and  so  we  all  love  you. 

"  (A  soldier)  MR.  BUCK  PRIVATE." 

Sometimes  actions  speak  louder  than  words.  There 
came  a  time  —  in  September,  1918  —  when  the  troops 
were  moving  pretty  steadily  through  Toul  and  up  toward 
the  Argonne.  The  Red  Cross  girls  were  hard  put  to  it 
to  see  that  all  the  boys  had  all  the  food  and  drink  and 
lodgings  and  baths  that  they  wanted;  but  they  saw  that 
these  were  given  and  in  generous  measure,  even  though  it 
meant  ten  and  twelve  and  fourteen  and  even  sixteen  hours 
of  work  at  a  stretch.  They  had  their  full  reward  for  their 
strenuous  endeavors,  not  always  in  letters,  or  even  in  words. 
Sometimes  the  language  of  expression  of  the  human  face 
is  the  most  convincing  thing  in  all  the  world. 

It  was  a  boy  from  Grand  Island,  Nebraska,  who 
slouched  into  the  Toul  canteen  in  the  station  yard  on 
one  of  the  hottest  of  those  September  nights.  He  was 
tired  and  dirty,  and  his  seventy-five  pounds  of  equipment 
upon  his  back  must  almost  have  been  more  than  mortal 
might  bear.  But  he  did  not  complain  —  it  was  not  the  way 
of  the  doughboy.  He  merely  shoved  his  pack  oif  upon  the 
floor  and  inquired  in  a  quiet,  tired  voice : 

"  Anything  that  you  can  spare  me,  missy  ?  " 

He  got  it.  Sandwiches,  coffee,  the  promise  of  a  bath; 
finally  the  bath  itself.  .  .  .  When  the  boy  —  he  was 
indeed  hardly  more  than  a  boy  despite  his  six  feet  of 
stature  —  left  the  Red  Cross  colony  he  had  been  fairly 


124:     WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

transformed.  He  was  cleaner,  cooler,  almost  younger, 
and  seeping  over  with  appreciation. 

"  It  was  wonderful,"  he  blurted  out.  "  I'd  like  to  thank 
you  —  in  a  practical  way,  sort  of.  Let  me  send  you  some- 
thing down  from  the  front  - —  a  souvenir  like.77 

The  Red  Cross  girl  who  had  first  taken  him  in  tow  and 
to  whom  he  was  now  talking  did  not  fully  comprehend  his 
remark.  Another  boy  from  another  Grand  Island  already 
was  engrossing  her  attention.  But  the  word  "  souvenir  " 
registered  ever  and  ever  so  slightly. 

"  Get  me  a  German/7  she  said  laughingly  and  lightly  as 
she  gave  him  her  name,  and  turned  to  the  boy  from  the 
other  Grand  Island. 

In  a  few  days  it  came;  a  sizable  pastboard  box  by 
Uncle  Sam's  own  army  parcel  post  over  there  in  France. 

The  girl  opened  it  quickly.  There  it  all  was  —  the 
revolver,  the  helmet,  the  wallet,  with  all  the  German  small 
change,  the  cigarette  case,  all  the  small  accouterments  of  a 
private  in  an  infantry  regiment,  even  down  to  the  buttons. 
In  the  package  was  a  roughly  written  little  note. 

"  I  was  a-going  to  send  you  his  ears,  too,77  it  read,  "  only 
our  top  sergeant  didn7t  seem  to  think  that  ears  was  a  nice 
thing  to  send  a  lady.77 

A  chapter  of  this  book  could  easily  be  confined  to  the 
episodes  —  sometimes  discouraging  and  at  other  times 
highly  amusing  —  in  the  personal  histories  of  the  canteen 
workers,  both  men  and  women.  There  were  many  times 
when  girls  rode  eight  miles  in  camions  to  their  work, 
and  many  of  these  girls  who  were  well  used  to  limousines 
and  who  knew  naught  of  trucks  until  they  came  to  France. 
Often  those  were  the  lucky  times.  For  there  were  the 
other  ones,  too,  when  there  was  a  shortage  of  camions  and 
a  woman  must  pull  on  her  rubbers  and  be  prepared  to  walk 
eight  or  ten  miles  with  a  smile  on  her  face,  and  after  that 
was  done  to  be  on  her  feet  for  eight  long  hours  of  service. 
It  was  a  hard  test,  but  the  American  girls  stood  it. 


THE  DOUGHBOY  MOVES  TOWARD  THE  FRONT      125 

There  were  the  women  in  the  little  out-of-the-way  can- 
teens who  struggled  with  coal  which  "  acted  like  coagu- 
lated granite,"  to  quote  the  words  of  one  of  them,  and  re- 
fused to  ignite,  save  by  patience  and  real  toil.  There  were 
long  hours  on  station  platforms  feeding  men  by  passing 
food  through  car  windows  because  there  was  not  even  time 
for  the  men  to  alight  and  enter  the  canteens.  Moreover, 
the  soldiers  had  a  habit  at  times  of  leaving  their  savings 
for  a  canteen  girl  to  send  to  the  folks  at  home,  and  although 
this  was  not  a  recognized  official  part  of  their  jobs,  and, 
in  fact,  involved  a  tremendous  amount  of  work,  the  trust 
was  not  refused.  The  women  workers  fussed  with  these 
and  many  other  errands  while  the  coffee  brewed  and  the 
chocolate  boiled. 

In  such  canteens  as  those  which  at  first  catered  to  all 
of  the  Allies,  the  menus  were  arranged  in  favor  of  the 
heaviest  patronage.  For  the  visiting  poilus  there  was 
specialization  in  French  dishes.  When  the  Italians  were 
expected,  macaroni  was  quite  sure  to  become  the  piece  de 
resistance.  But  for  the  Yankee  boy  there  has  apparently 
never  been  anything  to  excel  or  even  to  equal  good  white 
bread,  good  ham,  and  good  coffee.  French  coffee  may  be 
good  for  the  French  —  far  be  it  from  me  to  decide  upon 
its  merits  —  but  to  the  American  doughboy  give  a 
cup  of  Yankee  coffee,  cooked,  if  you  please,  in  Yankee 
style.  On  such  a  beverage  he  can  live  and  work  and  fight. 
And  perhaps  some  of  the  marvelous  quality  of  our  Ameri- 
can fighting  has  been  due  in  no  small  measure  to  the  good 
quality  of  our  American  coffee. 

Birds  will  sometimes  revisit  a  country  torn  and  swept 
bare  by  war  —  even  as  Picardy  and  Flanders  have  been 
torn  —  and  so  do  the  flowers  creep  back  gently  to  cling  to 
the  earth's  torn  wounds  —  the  shell  holes,  the  trenches,  the 
gaping  walls,  seeking  to  cover  the  hurts  with  their  soft 
camouflage  of  green  and  glowing  color.  The  tenderest 
sight  I  saw  in  bruised  Peronne  —  Peronne  which  seemed 


126     WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

so  terribly  hurt,  even  when  one  came  to  compare  it  with 
Cambrai,  or  St.  Quentin,  or  Noyon  —  was  a  little  new  vine 
climbing  up  over  the  ruins  of  the  parish  church;  and  I 
thought  of  the  centuries  that  the  vines  had  geen  growing 
over  the  gothic  traceries  of  Melrose  Abbey.  Flowers 
gathered  by  the  American  Army  served  to  decorate  the 
waysides  of  France.  The  folk  of  that  land  have  no 
monopoly  of  sentiment.  Indeed  I  have  often  wondered 
if  ours  might  not  also  have  been  called  the  sentimental 
army  as  well  as  the  amazing  army. 

"  I  know  why  I  am  here,"  said  a  doughboy  who  was 
passing  through  Paris  on  his  way  toward  leave  in  the 
south  of  France,  and  when  some  one  asked  him  the  reason, 
he  replied: 

"  Because  I  am  fighting  for  an  idea.  Our  President 
says  so." 

I  have  disgressed  —  purposely.  We  were  speaking  of 
the  flowers  of  France,  which  grow  in  such  abundance  in 
her  moist  and  gentle  climate.  The  very  flowers  that  the 
boys  of  the  A.  E.  F.  picked  when  their  trains  were  halted 
at  the  stations  —  or  sometimes  between  them  —  were 
ofttimes  given  out  by  the  Red  Cross  canteeners  to  other 
A.  E.  F.  boys  in  far  greater  need  of  them.  For  these 
were  the  little  costless,  priceless  tributes  which  were  handed 
to  the  wounded  men  in  the  hospital  trains  that  came  rolling 
softly  by  the  junction  stations  of  the  United  States  Mili- 
tary Railroad.  And  great,  hulking  men,  who  perhaps 
had  given  little  thought  at  other  times  to  the  flowers  under- 
foot, then  tucked  them  in  their  shirts.  Men  blinded  by 
gas  held  them  to  their  faces. 

"Wayside!" 

The  very  word  holds  within  its  seven  letters  the  sug- 
gestion of  great  and  little  adventures.  It  really  is  the 
traveler's  own  word.  Is  it  not,  after  all,  the  special  prop- 
erty of  the  wanderer,  who  reckons  the  beauty  of  the  world 
not  by  beaten  paths  alone  but  by  nooks  and  bypaths? 


THE  DOUGHBOY  MOVES  TOWARD  THE  FRONT      127 

To  the  vocabularies  of  stay-at-homes  or  such  routine  folk 
as  commuters,  for  instance,  it  must  remain  unknown  — 
in  its  real  significance.  The  troops  which  journeyed  across 
France  from  the  ports  where  our  gray  ships  put  them 
down  —  the  laborers,  the  poets,  the  farmers,  the  business 
men  who  found  themselves  welded  into  a  great  undertaking 
and  a  supreme  cause  —  will  never  forget  the  waysides  of 
France.  I  mean  the  waysides  that  bore  over  their  hospi- 
table doors  the  emblem  of  the  Red  Cross  and  the  emblem 
of  the  Stars  and  Stripes  side  by  side.  Sheltered  in  the 
hustle  and  bustle  of  railroad  stations,  in  the  quiet  of 
chateau  gardens  beneath  century-old  trees  and  within 
Roman  walls,  they  offered  rare  adventures  in  friendliness, 
in  tenderness,  in  Americanism. 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE  RED  CROSS  ON  THE  FIELD  OF  HONOR 

THE  triage  had  been  set  up  just  outside  of  a  small 
church  which  placed  its  buttressed  side  alongside  the 
market  place  of  the  village.  It  was  a  busy  place.  And 
just  because  you  may  not  know  what  triage  really  is  any 
better  than  I  did  when  I  first  heard  the  term,  let  me 
hasten  to  explain  that  it  is  an  emergency  station  set  up 
by  the  Army  Medical  Corps  just  back  of  the  actual  firing 
line  —  that  and  something  more ;  for  the  triage  generally 
means  a  great  center  of  Eed  Cross  activities  as  well.  And 
this  particular  one,  in  the  little  village  of  Noviant,  close 
behind  the  salient  of  Saint  Mihiel  —  to  which  reference 
was  made  in  the  preceding  chapter  —  was  the  initiation 
point  of  a  Red  Cross  captain ;  his  name  is  John  A.  Kimball 
and  he  comes  from  Boston. 

Captain  Kimball  told  it  to  me  one  day  in  Paris,  and 
I  shall  try  to  give  much  of  it  to  you  in  his  own  words. 
He  was  just  a  plain,  regular  business  fellow  who,  well 
outside  of  the  immediate  possibilities  of  army  service, 
had  closed  his  desk  in  Boston  and  had  offered  himself  to 
the  Eed  Cross.  And  to  work  for  the  Eed  Cross  at  the 
front  was  to  face  death  as  an  actuality. 

"  The  wounded  already  were  coming  in,  in  good  num- 
bers, on  that  unforgetable  morning  of  the  twelfth  of  Sep- 
tember, when  they  brought  him  in  —  the  first  dead  man 
that  I  had  faced  in  the  war,"  said  he.  "  We  had  had  our 
experiences  with  handling  iodine  and  antitoxin  and  dress- 
ings, but  this  artillery  captain  was  in  need  of  none  of  these. 
.  .  .  His  feet  stuck  out  underneath  the  blanket  that  was 
thrown  over  the  stretcher  and  hid  his  body,  his  head,  his 

128 


THE  RED  CROSS  ON  THE  FIELD  OF  HONOR      129 

arms,  and  his  hands.  I  saw  that  his  boots  were  new  and 
that  they  had  been  recently  polished,  too.  Of  course  they 
were  muddy,  but  I  remember  beneath  the  caking  of  the 
clay  that  they  were  of  new  leather.  One  does  remember 
details  at  such  a  time. 

"  I  buried  him.  It  was  a  new  experience,  and  not  a 
pleasant  one.  But  war  is  no  holiday ;  it  is  not  filled  with 
pleasant  experiences.  And  sooner  or  later  it  brings  to  a 
man  a  test,  which,  if  disagreeable,  is  all  but  supreme. 
This  was  my  test.  I  rose  to  it.  I  had  to.  I  buried  the 
man,  ran  hastily  through  his  papers  first  and  then  sealed 
them  into  a  packet  to  send  to  those  who  held  him  dearer 
than  life  itself." 

Because  the  Boston  captain's  experience  was  so  typical 
of  so  many  other  Red  Cross  men  who  risked  their  all  in 
the  service  at  the  front  lines  of  battle,  let  us  take  time 
to  consider  it  a  little  in  detail.  He  came  to  France  at 
the  end  of  June,  1918.  He  stayed  in  Paris  and  chafed 
at  the  delay  in  being  held  back  from  the  fighting  front. 
In  four  weeks  he  received  his  reward.  Having  asked  to 
be  made  a  searcher  among  killed,  wounded,  and  missing 
men,  he  was  assigned  to  the  Second  Division  at  Nancy, 
which  had  just  come  out  of  the  hard  fighting  at  Soissons 
and  was  resting  for  a  brief  week  before  going  into  action 
again. 

The  Second  Division  is  one  of  the  notable  Divisions  of 
our  fighting  forces  that  entered  France.  Because  one 
wishes  to  avoid  invidious  comparisons  and  because,  after 
all,  it  is  so  really  hard  to  decide  whether  this  Division, 
this  regiment,  or  that  is  entitled  to  go  down  into  history 
ahead  of  its  fellows,  I  should  very  much  hesitate  to  say 
that  the  Second  or  the  First  or  the  Third  or  the  Twenty- 
sixth  or  the  Seventy-seventh  or  any  other  one  Division  was 
the  ranking  Division  of  our  Regular  Army.  But  I  shall 
not  hesitate  to  write  that  the  Second  stood  in  the  front  rank. 
Out  of  some  2,800  Distinguished  Service  medals  that  had 
been  awarded  in  France  up  to  the  first  of  March,  1919, 


130     WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

some  800  had  gone  to  this  Division.  And  yet  it  was  but 
one  of  eighty  Divisions  involved  in  the  conflict  over  there. 

In  the  Second  Division  were  comprised  two  of  the  most 
historic  Regular  Army  regiments  of  other  days  —  the 
Ninth  and  the  Twenty-third.  The  records  of  each  of  these 
commands  in  Cuba  and  in  the  Philippines  are  among  the 
most  enthralling  of  any  in  our  military  history.  And  the 
Ninth  was  the  regiment  chosen  to  enter  Peking  at  the  close 
of  the  Japanese-Chinese  War  and  there  to  represent  the 
United  States  Government.  These  regiments  before  being 
sent  to  the  Great  War  in  Europe  were  recruited  up  to  the 
new  fighting  strength  —  very  largely  of  boys  from  the 
central  and  western  portions  of  New  York  State.  In  addi- 
tion to  these  two  regiments  of  the  former  Regular  Army, 
the  Second  Division  held  several  of  marines,  which  leaves 
neither  room  nor  excuse  for  comment.  The  marines  too 
long  ago  made  their  fighting  reputation  to  need  any  more 
whatsoever  added  by  this  book. 

The  Second  Division  in  the  earlier  days  of  the  fighting 
of  the  American  Army  as  a  unit  had  already  made  a  dis- 
tinguished reputation  at  both  Chateau-Thierry  and  at 
Soissons.  It  was  at  the  first  point  that  Major  General 
Bundy,  who  then  commanded  it,  was  reputed  to  have  re- 
plied to  a  suggestion  from  a  French  commanding  officer 
that  he  had  better  retire  his  men  from  an  exceptionally 
heavy  boche  fire  that  they  were  then  facing,  that  he  knew 
no  way  of  making  his  men  turn  back ;  literally  they  did  not 
know  the  command  to  retreat.  Our  amazing  army  was  a 
machine  of  many  speeds  forward,  but  apparently  quite 
without  a  reverse  gear. 

When  Kimball  of  Boston  joined  the  Second  as  a  Red 
Cross  worker,  General  Bundy  was  just  retiring  from  its 
command,  and  was  being  succeeded  by  Brigadier  General 
John  A.  Le  Jeune,  who  took  charge  on  the  second  of  August, 
at  Nancy;  for  the  Division  was  spending  a  whole  week 
catching  its  breath  before  plunging  into  active  fighting 


THE  RED  CROSS  ON  THE  FIELD  OF  HONOR      131 

once  again.  On  the  ninth  its  opportunity  began  to  show 
itself.  It  moved  to  the  Toul  front  in  the  vicinity  of  the 
Moselle  River,  and  was  put  into  a  position  just  behind  the 
Saint  Mihiel  sector  —  that  funny  little  kink  on  the  battle 
front  that  the  Germans  had  so  long  succeeded  in  keeping 
a  kink. 

For  a  long  time  —  in  exact  figures  just  a  month,  which 
to  restless  fighting  men  is  a  near  eternity  —  the  sector  was 
quiet.  There  were  practically  no  casualties;  and  this  of 
itself  was  almost  a  record  for  the  Second,  which  in  four 
months  of  real  fighting  replaced  itself  with  new  men  to 
a  number  exceeding  its  original  strength.  In  that  month 
the  Division  prepared  itself  for  the  strenuous  service  on  the 
fighting  front.  It  went  into  camp  for  eleven  days  at 
Colombes-la-Belles,  within  hiking  distance  of  the  actual 
front,  and  there  practiced  hand-grenade  work  while  it  made 
its  final  replacements.  The  work  just  ahead  of  it  would 
require  full  strength  and  full  skill. 

On  the  twenty-seventh  of  August  it  began  slowly  moving 
into  the  front  firing  line.  From  the  first  day  of  Septem- 
ber until  the  eighth  it  worked  its  way  through  the  great 
Bois  de  Sebastopol  (Sebastopol  Forest),  marching  by  night 
all  the  while,  and  covering  from  eight  to  nine  miles  a  night. 
And  upon  the  night  of  the  eleventh  —  the  eve  of  one  of 
the  most  brilliant  battles  in  American  history  —  took  over 
a  section  of  the  trenches  north  of  the  little  town  of  Limey. 

"  Your  objective  is  Triacourt,"  the  officers  told  the  men 
that  evening  as  they  were  preparing  for  going  over  the  top 
at  dawn,  "  and  the  Second  is  given  two  days  in  which  to 
take  it" 

Triacourt  fell  in  six  hours. 

Count  that,  if  you  will,  for  an  American  fighting 
Division. 

The  headquarters  of  the  Second  were  at  Mananville  to 
the  south  of  the  fighting  lines.  And  halfway  between 
Limey  of  the  trenches  (they  ran  right  through  the  streets 


132     WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

of  the  little  town)  and  Mananville  was  Noviant  where,  as 
you  already  know,  the  triage  was  established  beside  the 
walls  of  the  church  and  the  Red  Cross  functioned  at  the 
front.  Remember  that  the  triage  was  nothing  more  nor 
less  than  a  sorting  station,  where  wounded  men,  being  sent 
back  in  a  steady  stream  from  the  front  —  three  to  six 
miles  distant  —  were  divided  between  four  field  hospitals 
of  the  Regular  Army  service;  one  handling  gassed  cases, 
another  badly  wounded,  and  the  other  two  the  strictly  sur- 
gical cases.  Each  of  these  divisions  consisted  roughly  of 
from  ten  to  fifteen  doctors  and  about  one  hundred  enlisted 
men  —  no  women  workers  were  ever  permitted  so  near 
the  front  —  and  was  equipped  with  from  five  to  eight  army 
trucks  of  the  largest  size. 

There  has  been  sometimes  an  erroneous  impression  that 
the  Red  Cross  was  prepared  to  assume  the  entire  hospital 
functions  of  the  United  States  Army;  I  have  even  heard 
it  stated  by  apparently  well-informed  persons  that  such  a 
thing  was  fact.  It  is  fact,  however,  that  if  the  enormous 
task  had  been  thrust  upon  the  shoulders  of  our  Red  Cross 
it  would  have  accepted  it.  It  has  never  yet  refused  a  work 
from  the  government  —  no  matter  how  onerous  or  how 
disagreeable.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  army,  for  many 
very  good  and  very  sufficient  reasons  of  its  own,  preferred 
to  retain  direct  charge  of  its  own  hospitals,  both  in  the  field 
and  back  of  the  lines,  and  even  took  over  the  hospitals 
which  the  Red  Cross  first  established  in  France  before  the 
final  policy  of  the  Surgeon  General's  office  was  definitely 
settled,  which  hardly  meant  a  lifting  of  responsibility  from 
the  shoulders  of  the  American  Red  Cross.  Its  task,  as  we 
shall  see  in  the  chapters  which  immediately  follow  this,  was 
almost  a  superhuman  one.  It  needed  all  its  energies  and 
its  great  resources  to  follow  the  direct  line  of  its  traditional 
activity  —  the  furnishing  of  comfort  to  the  sick,  the 
wounded,  and  the  oppressed. 

A  wise  man,  one  with  canny  understanding,  if  you  will, 
who  found  himself  at  the  Saint  Mihiel  sector  would  have 


THE  RED  CROSS  ON  THE  FIELD  OF  HONOR      133 

understood  that  a  battle  was  brewing.  There  was  a  ter- 
rific traffic  on  each  of  the  roads  leading  up  toward  the 
trenches  from  the  railhead  and  supply  depot  at  the  rear  — 
big  camions  and  little  camionettes,  two-man  whippet  tanks, 
French  seventy-fives  (as  what  is  apparently  the  best  field 
cannon  yet  devised  will  be  known  for  a  long  time  into  the 
future) ,  motor  cars  with  important-looking  officers,  ambu- 
lances, more  big  camions,  more  little  camionettes  —  all  a 
seemingly  unending  procession.  Fifth  Avenue,  New 
York,  or  Michigan  Avenue,  Chicago,  on  a  busy  Saturday 
afternoon  could  not  have  been  more  crowded,  or  the  traffic 
handled  in  a  more  orderly  fashion. 

The  barrage  which  immediately  preceded  the  actual 
battle  began  at  one  o'clock  on  the  morning  of  the  twelfth. 
It  lasted  for  nearly  four  hours  and  not  only  was  noisily  in- 
cessant but  so  terrific  and  so  brilliant  that  one  could 
actually  have  read  a  newspaper  from  its  continuous 
flashes  if  that  had  been  an  hour  for  newspaper  reading. 

"  It  was  like  boiling  water,"  says  Kimball,  "  with  each 
bubble  a  death-dealing  explosion." 

At  five  o'clock  in  the  morning  the  men  went  over  the  top, 
and  our  Eed  Cross  man  shook  himself  out  of  a  short, 
hard  sleep  of  three  hours  in  a  damp  shed  near  the  triage 
beside  the  church  at  Noviant,  for  it  had  been  raining 
steadily  throughout  the  entire  night,  and  went  across  to 
that  roughly  improvised  dressing  station.  His  big  day's 
work  was  beginning.  By  six  it  was  already  in  full  swing. 
The  first  wounded  men  were  coming  back  from  the  fighting 
lines  up  at  Limey  and  were  being  sorted  into  the  ambu- 
lances before  they  were  started  for  the  three  big  evacuation 
hospitals  in  the  rear  —  each  of  them  containing  from  three 
hundred  to  five  hundred  beds.  The  Boston  man  saw  each 
wounded  soldier  as  he  was  placed  in  the  ambulance.  Into 
the  hands  of  those  men  who  asked  for  them  or  who  were 
able  to  smoke  he  gave  cigarettes.  And  to  those  who  were 
far  too  weak  for  the  exercise  or  strain  that  smoking 
brought,  gave  a  word  of  encouragement  or  perhaps  a  shake 


134     WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

of  the  hand.     And  all  in  the  name  of  the  Red  Cross. 

He  could  have  put  in  a  busy  day  doing  nothing  else 
whatsoever;  but  felt  that  there  were  other  sections  of  the 
battle  front  that  needed  the  immediate  presence  of  the 
American  Red  Cross.  So  at  about  half  after  seven  he 
climbed  in  beside  the  driver  of  a  khaki-colored  army 
camionette  and  headed  straight  for  Limey,  and  the  heart  of 
the  trouble.  There  was  another  old  and  badly  battered 
church  in  the  town  square  there,  and  there  a  new  triage 
already  was  being  established ;  for  the  Yanks  were  driving 
forward  —  with  fearful  impetus  and  at  a  terrific  rate.  So 
the  hospital  went  on,  the  sorting  stages,  with  their  inde- 
scribable scenes  of  human  suffering  —  more  stretchers  and 
still  more  in  the  hands  of  boche  prisoners  coming  in  with 
their  ghastly  freight.  Captain  Kimball  again  passed  out 
his  cigarettes  and  started  forward.  Now  he  was  on  the 
scene  of  actual  warfare.  Dawn  had  broken.  It  had  ceased 
to  rain  and  the  sky  was  bright  and  blue  with  white,  fluffy, 
sun-touched  clouds  drifting  lazily  across  it  —  just  as  the 
Boston  boy  had  seen  them  drift  across  the  sky  in  peaceful 
days  on  Cape  Cod  when  he  had  had  nothing  to  do  but  lie  on 
his  back  and  gaze  serenely  up  at  them. 

"  I  plunged  forward  over  the  broken  field,"  he  told  me, 
"  and  there  I  came  across  my  artillery  captain.  I  called 
an  aid  and  we  took  him  back  —  he  of  the  bright  new  boots 
that  had  so  recently  been  polished.  ...  I  got  back  into 
the  game.  All  the  time  our  boys  shot  ahead  and  the 
racket  was  incessant.  Once,  when  I  bumped  my  way 
across  the  German  trenches,  I  paused  long  enough  to 
stick  my  nose  down  into  -one  of  their  dugouts.  It  was 
easy  to  see  that  the'enemy  had  not  anticipated  the  attack. 
For  in  that  dugout  —  it  was  wonderfully  neat  and  nice, 
with  its  concrete  walls  and  floors  and  ceiling  and  its  electric 
lights  —  was  the  breakfast  still  upon  the  table ;  the  bread, 
the  sausages,  and  the  beer.  I  could  have  stayed  there  an 
hour  and  enjoyed  it  pretty  well  myself.  But  there  were 
other  things  to  be  done.  I  got  out  into  the  shell-plowed 


THE  RED  CROSS  ON  THE  FIELD  OF  HONOR       135 

fields  once  again.  Across  that  rough  sea  of  mud  an  en- 
gineer regiment  was  already  building  a  road,  which  meant 
that  we  could  get  a  Red  Cross  ambulance  right  to  the  very 
front.  I  walked  back  to  Limey  —  or  rather  I  stumbled 
over  the  rough  fields  —  and  there  found  one  which  had 
come  through  from  Toul  that  morning,  loaded  to  its  very 
roof  with  bandages  and  chocolates  and  cigarettes.  And  I 
found  that  Triacourt  had  fallen.  It  still  lacked  some 
minutes  of  noon.  The  job  for  which  our  Division  had 
been  given  two  days  had  been  accomplished  in  six  hours  — 
but  such  hours. 

"  We  drove  without  delay  into  Triacourt  —  a  fearfully 
slow  business  every  foot  of  it,  with  every  inch  of  the  has- 
tily constructed  road  crowded  with  traffic.  But  we  got 
through  and  in  the  early  afternoon  were  in  the  main  street 
of  the  little  town  which  the  French  had  watched  hungrily 
for  four  years  and  seemingly  had  been  unable  to  capture. 
The  women  and  children  of  the  place  came  out  into  the 
sun-lighted  street  and  rubbed  their  eyes.  Was  it  all  a 
dream;  these  men  in  tin  helmets  and  uniforms  of  khaki 
and  of  olive  drab  ?  !No,  it  could  not  be  a  dream.  These 
were  real  men,  fighting  men.  These  were  the  Americans, 
the  Americans  of  whom  rumors  had  even  run  back  of  the 
enemy  lines.  They  found  their  voices,  these  women,  for 
the  Germans  had  taken  the  men  of  Triacourt  as  prisoners. 

e  'Eons  Americains!"  they  shrieked,  almost  in  a  single 
cry.  And  we  saluted  gravely." 

Over  the  heads  of  the  two  Red  Cross  men  —  the  captain 
and  the  driver  of  the  little  camionette  —  an  aftermath  of 
the  battle  in  the  form  of  an  air  fight  between  boche  planes 
and  American  was  in  progress ;  young  Dave  Putnam,  one 
of  the  most  brilliant  of  our  aces,  was  making  the  supreme 
sacrifice  for  his  country.  To  the  north  the  Germans  were 
dragging  up  a  battery  and  preparing  to  shell  the  little 
town  that  they  had  just  lost;  but  not  for  long.  Batteries 
of  American  .155's  were  appearing  from  the  other  direction 
and  were  working  effectively.  And  at  dusk  a  report  came 


136  WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

into  Division  Headquarters  that  a  company  of  one  of  the 
old  Kegular  Army  regiments  had  captured  an  entire  Ger- 
man hospital  —  patients,  nurses,  doctors,  and  even  two 
German  Red  Cross  ambulances;  while  the  tingling  radio 
and  the  omnipresent  telephone  began  to  bring  into  Division 
Headquarters  the  story  of  one  of  the  most  remarkable 
American  victories  of  the  entire  war.  And  our  Eed  Cross 
began  the  first  of  a  four  days'  stay  in  a  damp  dugout  in 
the  lee  of  a  badly  smashed  barn. 

Kimball's  story  is  quite  typical  of  many  others.  But 
before  I  begin  upon  them  —  what  the  motion-picture 
director  would  call  the  "  close-ups  "  of  what  is  perhaps 
the  most  picturesque  form  of  all  the  many,  many  pic- 
turesque features  of  our  Red  Cross  in  action,  consider  for 
a  moment  how  it  first  got  into  action  upon  the  field  of 
battle.  I  have  referred  several  times  already  to  the  ex- 
cessive strain  which  the  great  German  offensives  which 
began  in  March,  1918,  placed  upon  its  facilities,  while 
they  still  were  in  a  stage  of  development.  When  we  read 
of  the  work  of  the  Transportation  Department  and  of  the 
Bureau  of  Supplies,  we  saw  how  both  of  these  great  func- 
tions had  suddenly  been  confronted  with  a  task  that  de- 
manded the  brains  and  brawn  of  supermen  and  how 
gloriously  and  brave-heatedly1  they  had  arisen  to  the 
task.  The  field  service  of  our  Red  Cross  —  its  first  con- 
tact with  the  men  of  our  army  in  actual  conflict  —  was 
second  to  neither  of  these. 

Remember,  if  you  will,  that  it  was  but  a  mere  nine 
months  after  the  American  Red  Cross  Commission  to 
Europe  landed  in  France  that  its  organization  was  put  to 
its  greatest  test.  The  news  of  the  long-expected  and  well- 
advertised  German  offensive  reached  Paris  on  the  very 
evening  of  the  day  on  which  it  started,  March  21,  1918. 
Paris  caught  the  news  with  a  choking  heart.  The  coup, 
which  even  her  own  military  experts  had  frankly  predicted 
as  the  turning  point  of  the  entire  war,  actually  had  come 


THE  RED  CROSS  ON  THE  FIELD  OF  HONOR      137 

to  pass.  No  wonder  that  the  once  gay  capital  of  the 
French  fairly  held  its  breath  in  that  unf orgetable  hour  — 
that  every  other  community  of  France,  big  or  little,  did 
the  same  —  and  fairly  fought  for  news  of  the  day's  opera- 
tions. Yet  news  gave  little  comfort.  It  was  bad  news, 
all  of  it;  fearfully  and  unmistakably  bad.  Each  succeed- 
ing courier  seemed  to  bring  enlarged  statements  of  the 
enemy's  immensity  and  seemingly  irresistible  force.  It 
was  indeed  a  real  crisis. 

In  that  hour  of  alarm  and  even  of  some  real  panic,  our 
American  Red  Cross  showed  neither.  It  kept  its  cool 
and  thinking  head.  Major  James  H.  Perkins,  then  rank- 
ing as  Red  Cross  Commissioner  to  Europe  and  a  man  whom 
you  have  met  in  earlier  pages  of  this  book,  called  a  con- 
ference of  his  department  heads  on  that  very  evening  of 
the  twenty-first  of  March.  He  told  them  quietly  that  they 
were  to  make  known  every  resource  at  their  command  and 
to  have  each  and  every  one  of  their  workers  —  men  or 
women  —  ready  for  call  to  any  kind  of  service,  night  or 
day. 

"  Let  every  worker  feel  that  on  him  or  her  individually 
may  rest  the  fate  of  the  allied  cause/'  was  the  keynote  of 
the  simple  orders  that  issued  from  this  conference. 

It  was  in  the  days  that  immediately  followed  that  the 
flexibility  and  the  emergency  values  of  the  American  Red 
Cross  organization  —  qualities  that  it  had  diligently  set 
forth  to  attain  within  itself  —  came  to  their  fullest  test. 
The  discipline  and  willingness  of  practically  every  worker 
was  also  under  test,  while  for  the  very  first  time  in  all  its 
history  overseas  it  was  given  large  opportunity  to  carry 
to  the  men  of  the  allied  lines  a  great  material  message. 

How  well  was  that  material  message  carried  ? 

Before  I  answer  that  point-blank  question,  let  me  carry 
you  back  a  little  time  before  that  night  of  the  spring 
equinox.  Let  me  ask  you  to  remember,  if  you  will,  that 
the  super-structure  of  Red  Cross  effort  in  that  critical 


138     WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

hour  had  been  laid  many  weeks  before ;  in  fact  very  soon 
after  its  original  unit  of  eighteen  men  under  command  of 
Major  Murphy  had  first  arrived  in  France.  It  had  experi- 
mented with  the  French,  in  definite  and  successful  efforts 
to  relieve  the  hard-pressed  civilian  population  of  that  dis- 
tressed country.  It  had  worked,  and  worked  hard,  in  the 
broad  valleys  of  the  Somme  and  the  Oise,  which  had  been 
devastated  by  the  boche  when  he  made  his  famous  "  strate- 
gic "  retreat  to  the  Hindenburg  Line  in  March,  1917  - 
just  one  year  before. 

The  Germans  had  left  behind  them  an  especial  misery 
in  the  form  of  a  vast  region  of  burned  and  blown-up  homes, 
broken  vehicles  and  farm  machinery,  defiled  wells,  hacked 
and  broken  orchards,  and  ruined  soil.  I  have  stood  in 
both  of  these  valleys  myself  after  German  retreats  and 
so  can  bespeak  as  personal  evidence  the  desolation  which 
they  left  behind.  I,  myself,  have  seen  whole  orchards  of 
young  fruit  trees  wantonly  ruined  by  cutting  their  trunks 
a  foot  or  more  above  the  level  of  the  ground.  And  this 
was  but  a  single  form  of  their  devilment. 

Yet  as  the  Germans  retreated  "  strategically  "  there  in 
the  spring  weeks  of  1917,  there  followed  on  their  very 
heels  the  heavy-hearted  but  indomitable  refugees  who  in 
yesteryear  had  known  these  hectares  as  their  very  own. 
Returning,  they  found  but  little  by  which  they  might  rec- 
ognize their  former  habitats.  Devastation  ruled,  life  was 
practically  extinct.  The  farm  animals,  even  the  barnyard 
fowls  and  the  tiny  rabbits  —  the  joy  of  a  French  peasant's 
heart  —  had  been  killed  or  carried  away.  Not  even  the 
bobbins  of  the  cast-out  sewing  machines  or  the  cart  wheels 
were  left  behind  by  an  enemy  who  prided  himself  on  his 
efficiency,  but  who  had  few  other  virtues  for  any  decent 
pride. 

Seemingly  stouter-hearted  folk  than  the  French  might 
have  quailed  at  such  wholesale  destruction ;  but  the  refugees 
did  not  complain.     Instead,  they  set  patiently  to  work  — 
many   of  them   still   Within   the  range    of   the   enemy's 


THE  RED  CROSS  OK  THE  FIELD  OF  HONOR      139 

guns  —  to  rehabilitate  themselves.  Their  burdens  and 
their  problems  were  staggeringly  great;  their  resources 
pitifully  small.  Thus  our  Red  Cross  found  them,  and 
to  give  them  effective  aid  —  not  only  in  the  valleys  of  the 
Somme  and  the  Oise,  but  in  the  other  devastated  areas 
of  France  —  formed  the  Bureau  of  Reconstruction  and 
Relief  under  Edward  Eyre  Hunt.  Of  Mr.  Hunt's  work, 
the  record  will  be  made  at  another  time.  In  order,  how- 
ever, that  you  may  gain  the  proper  perspective  on  the  be- 
ginnings of  the  field  service  of  our  Red  Cross  with  our 
army  in  action,  permit  me  to  call  attention  in  a  few  brief 
sentences  to  some  salient  features  of  the  Bureau  of  Recon- 
struction and  Relief. 

It  located  warehouses  at  convenient  places  —  Ham, 
Noyon,  Arras,  and  Soissons  —  all  of  them  within  gun- 
shot of  the  Hindenburg  Line.  These  were  stocked  with 
food,  clothing,  furniture,  kitchen  utensils,  building  mate- 
rials, seed,  farm  implements,  even  with  rabbits,  chickens, 
goats,  and  other  domesticated  animals.  A  personnel  of 
several  field  workers  was  sent  into  the  district  to  supervise 
the  distribution  of  these  commodities,  which  was  done 
partly  through  authorized  French  committees  and  munici- 
pal officers  in  the  devastated  towns.  These  cooperated 
with  devoted  groups  of  British,  French  and  American 
workers,  who  established  themselves  in  small  groups  and 
who  worked  to  inspire  the  liberated  areas  with  faith  and 
courage  and  hope.  Looming  large  among  all  these  co- 
ordinated agencies  were  the  Smith  College  Unit  —  com- 
posed of  graduates  of  the  Northampton  institution  — 
and  the  group  of  workers  from  the  Society  of  Friends  — 
both  of  whom,  in  the  fall  of  1917,  became  integral  parts 
of  the  Red  Cross. 

These  two  coordinated  agencies,  together  with  the 
Secours  d'Urgence,  the  Village  Reconstitue,  the  Civil 
Section  of  the  American  Fund  for  the  French  Wounded, 
the  Philadelphia  Unit,  and  the  Comite  Americaine  pour 
les  Regiones  Devastees,  had  their  various  operations  well 


140     WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

under  way  by  the  early  summer  of  1917.  When  it  entered 
the  field,  our  American  Red  Cross  offered  assistance  in 
every  way  to  these  organizations,  thereby  giving  a  new  im- 
petus to  their  work.  Agricultural  societies  were  organized 
for  the  common  rehabilitation  of  the  areas,  American 
tractors  and  plows  were  furnished  by  the  French  Govern- 
ment, while  the  Red  Cross  workers  helped  with  and  encour- 
aged the  planting,  furnishing  large  quantities  of  seeds  as 
they  did  so,  while  small  herds  of  live  stock,  also  given  by 
the  Red  Cross,  appeared  here  and  there  upon  the  French 
landscape. 

The  workers  did  even  more.  They  turned  to  and  helped 
patch  up  buildings  that,  with  a  minimum  amount  of  labor, 
could  again  be  made  habitable,  erected  small  barracks  in 
some  places,  and  assisted  generally  in  renewing  life  and  the 
first  bare  evidences  of  civilization  in  the  towns  of  the  deso- 
lated sections. 

In  March,  1918,  these  desecrated  lands  were  just  spring- 
ing to  life  once  again.  God's  sun  was  breaking  through 
the  clouds  of  winter  and  gently  coaxing  the  wheat  up  out 
of  the  rough,  brown  lands,  gardens  again  dotted  the  land- 
scape —  the  Smith  College  Unit  itself  had  supervised  and 
with  its  own  hands  helped  in  the  planting  of  more  than 
four  hundred  and  fifty  of  these  —  the  little  villages  and  the 
bigger  towns  were  showing  increasing  signs  of  life  and 
activity;  then  came  the  blow.  The  clouds  gathered 
together  once  again.  And  in  the  misty  morning  of  the 
twenty-first  of  March  began  a  week  of  horror  and  devas- 
tation —  a  single  seven  days  in  which  all  the  patient, 
loving  labor  of  nearly  a  twelvemonth  past  was  erased 
completely.  The  Germans  swept  across  the  plains  of 
Picardy  once  again  —  the  French  and  British  armies  and 
the  terror-stricken  civilians  along  with  the  American  war 
workers  were  swept  before  them  as  flotsam  and  jetsam, 
all  in  a  mad  onrush.  Yet  all  was  not  lost.  One  field 
worker,  a  stout-hearted  little  woman  in  uniform,  sat  in  the 


fe     2  » 
O    tg£ 


THE  RED  CROSS  ON  THE  FIELD  OF  HONOR      141 

seat  of  a  swaying  motor  truck  and  as  the  thing  rolled 
and  tossed  over  a  road  of  unspeakable  roughness  wrote  in 
her  red-bound  diary,  this: 

"  The  best  of  all  remains  —  the  influence  of  neighbor- 
liness,  friendship,  kindness,  and  sympathy  —  these  are 
made  of  the  stuff  which  no  chemistry  of  war  can  crush. 
We  face  more  than  half  a  year's  work  torn  to  pieces. 
But  I  do  believe  that  the  fact  of  this  sacrifice  will  deepen 
its  effect." 

Such  was  the  spirit  of  our  Red  Cross  workers  overseas. 

They  now  had  full  need  for  such  spirit.  The  monotony 
of  working  from  daylight  to  dusk  in  lonely  farms  and 
villages,  where  patience  was  the  virtue  uppermost,  was 
now  to  be  replaced  by  a  whirl  of  events  which  succeeded 
one  another  with  kaleidoscopic  rapidity,  demanding  serv- 
ice both  night  and  day  of  a  character  as  varied  as  the 
past  had  been  colorless. 

The  headquarters  of  the  American  Red  Cross  for  the 
Somme  district  on  the  morning  of  the  twenty-first  of 
March,  1918,  were  at  Ham  —  the  little  village  once  made 
famous  by  the  imprisonment  and  escape  of  Louis  Philippe. 
They  were  in  charge  of  Captain  William  B.  Jackson,  who 
afterwards  became  major  in  entire  charge  of  the  Army 
and  Navy  Field  Service.  Here  at  Ham  was  also  the 
largest  Red  Cross  warehouse  in  the  entire  district.  An- 
other warehouse  stood  at  !Nelse,  a  few  miles  distant,  to 
the  rear.  To  the  north  was  Arras,  with  still  another 
American  Red  Cross  storehouse,  while  to  the  south  was  the 
Soissons  warehouse. 

On  that  same  morning  —  one  cannot  easily  efface  it 
from  any  picture  of  any  continued  activity  of  the  Great 
War  —  the  Smith  College  Unit  workers  had  gone  from 
their  headquarters  at  Grecourt,  both  on  foot  and  in  their 
four  Ford  cars,  to  their  various  tasks  in  the  seventeen 
small  villages  in  the  immediate  vicinity.  Two  or  three  of 
these  young  women  journeyed  to  Pommiers,  a  little  town  in 


142  WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

the  area,  whose  school  had  been  reopened  by  them,  and 
which  also  served  the  children  of  several  surrounding  vil- 
lages. And  because  so  many  of  the  children  had  to  walk 
so  far  to  their  lessons  the  Red  Cross  served  them  each  day 
with  a  substantial  school  lunch  —  of  vermicelli,  chocolate, 
and  milk.  A  few  others  of  the  college  graduates  went  a 
little  farther  afield  —  to  supervise  planting  operations  in 
near  by  towns  —  yet  not  one  of  these  girls  was  one  whit 
above  turning  to  and  working  on  the  task  with  her  own 
hands,  while  some  helped  the  Red  Cross  workmen's  gangs 
roofing  houses  and  stables,  repairing  shops  and  fitting  out- 
buildings, in  some  crude  form,  for  human  habitation. 

Into  the  very  heart  of  those  varied  activities  that  March 
morning  marched  the  red-faced  British  Town  Major  of 
Ham  with  the  blunt  and  crisp  announcement  to  the  Red 
Cross  man  that  the  town  must  be  evacuated  without  delay ; 
the  reitreat  already  was  well  under  way,  the  vast  hegira 
fairly  begun.  .  .  .  The  Red  Cross  force  there  at  Ham  did 
not  hesitate.  It  first  sent  word  to  all  the  workers  in  the 
villages  roundabout;  then,  having  quickly  mobilized  in 
the  town  square  its  entire  transportation  outfit  —  three 
trucks,  a  camionette,  and  a  small  battered  touring  car  — 
gave  quiet,  prompt  attention  to  its  own  immediate  problem 
of  evacuation  work. 

It  functioned  fast  and  it  functioned  extremely  well. 
Back  and  forth  across  the  River  Somme  —  over  the  rough 
bridges  hurriedly  builded  by  Americans  for  the  British 
Army  —  it  transported  hundreds  and  hundreds  of  chil- 
dren and  infirm  refugees.  All  that  day,  all  that  night,  and 
well  into  the  next  morning  it  worked,  driving  again  and 
again  into  the  bombarded  towns  in  the  region  to  bring  out 
the  last  remaining  families.  The  Germans  were  already 
on  the  edge  of  the  town  when  one  Red  Cross  driver  made 
his  last  trip  into  Ham  —  on  three  flat  tires  and  a  broken 
spring!  Yet  despite  these  physical  disabilities  succeeded 
in  carrying  six  wounded  British  soldiers  out  to  safety. 

To  our  Red  Cross  the  Smith  College  girls  reported,  with 


THE  RED  CROSS  ON  THE  FIELD  OF  HONOR       143 

great  promptitude.  And  throughout  the  entire  succeeding 
week  —  a  deadly  and  fearfully  depressing  seven  days  of 
continued  retirement  before  the  advancing  Germans  — 
showed  admirable  courage  and  initiative ;  the  sort  of  thing 
that  the  military  expert  of  to-day  classes  as  morale  of  the 
highest  sort.  These  women  worked  night  and  day  setting 
up,  whenever  the  retreat  halted  even  for  a  few  hours,  tem- 
porary canteens  and  dispensaries  and  evacuating  civilians 
and  carrying  wounded  soldiers  through  to  safe  points  be- 
hind the  lines.  And  because  many  of  these  last  were 
American  soldiers  they  formed  the  first  point  of  field  con- 
tact between  our  Eed  Cross  and  our  army  and  so  are  fairly 
entitled  to  a  post  of  high  honor  in  the  pages  of  this  book. 

"  Send  me  another  sixty  of  those  Smith  College  girls," 
shouted  an  American  brigadier  general  from  his  field 
headquarters  in  the  fight  at  Chateau-Thierry.  "  This 
forty  isn't  half  enough.  I  want  a  hundred." 

The  college  graduate  in  charge  of  the  temporary  can- 
teen there  who  received  this  request  laughed. 

"  Tell  him,"  she  said,  "  that  there  have  been  no  more 
than  sixteen  at  any  one  time." 

But  sixteen  human  units  of  individual  efficiency  can 
move  mountains. 

Take  the  Smith  girl  who  drove  a  Bed  Cross  car  through 
the  tangle  of  war  traffic  at  a  crossroads  near  Boye,  while 
the  fighting  waged  thick  around  about  that  little  town. 
She  found  her  Fordette  stalled  and  tangled  in  several  dif- 
ferent lines  of  communication;  between  ammunition 
trucks,  supply  camions,  loads  of  soldiers,  batteries  — 
all,  like  herself,  stopped  and  standing  idle  and  impotent. 

The  girl  sensed  the  situation  in  an  instant.  She  must 
have  been  a  JSTew  Yorker  and  have  remembered  the  jams 
of  traffic  that  she  had  seen  on  Forty-second  Street;  at 
Broadway  and  again  at  Fifth  Avenue.  At  any  rate  she 
acted  upon  the  instant.  She  descended  from  the  seat  of 
her  little  car,  and,  standing  there  at  the  crossing  of  the 


WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

roads  with  an  American  flag  in  her  fingers,  directed 
traffic  with  the  precision  and  good  sense  of  the  skilled 
city  traffic  cop.  She  held  up  staff  cars,  directed  whole 
regiments  of  artillery,  shouted  orders  to  convoys,  and  for 
several  hours  kept  the  important  corner  from  becoming 
another  hopeless  tangle  of  traffic.  Her  orders  were  not 
disputed,  either  by  private  or  general.  All  ranks  smiled 
at  her,  but  all  ranks  saluted  and  obeyed  her  orders. 

It  was  in  situations  such  as  this  that  the  rare  combina- 
tion of  military  discipline,  the  flexibility  to  permit  of 
human  initiative  that  the  Red  Cross  sought  to  attain  in 
its  inner  self,  showed  itself.  The  plan  of  withdrawal 
which  had  been  carefully  mapped  out  at  headquarters  was 
implicitly  followed  —  almost  to  its  last  details.  Yet  the 
personnel  of  the  organization  was  both  permitted  and  en- 
couraged to  work  at  its  highest  efficiency  both  in  evacuating 
human  beings  and  salvaging  the  precious  supplies.  For 
instance,  after  that  first  day  of  the  great  retreat,  when  all 
the  Red  Cross  workers  in  the  area  had  reported  to  their 
chiefs  at  Nelse  and  at  Roye  —  both  well  to  the  rear  of 
Ham  —  they  were  dispatched  to  work  up  and  down 
the  entire  constantly  changing  front.  Geographically, 
Soissons  was  the  hub  of  the  wheel  on  which  these  emer- 
gency Red  Cross  activities  turned  so  rapidly.  They  all 
swung  back  in  good  order,  each  unit,  by  motor-courier 
service,  keeping  in  communication  with  its  fellows.  Roye 
was  the  center  of  the  secondary  line  of  the  Red  Cross 
front  which  for  the  moment  stretched  from  Amiens  in 
the  northwest  to  Soissons  in  the  southeast.  When  it  was 
driven  from  this  line  the  entire  Red  Cross  force  in  the 
vicinity  retired,  still  in  good  order,  to  a  brand-new  one, 
stretching  across  Amiens,  Montdidier,  and  Noyon.  From 
the  small  American  Red  Cross  warehouse  at  this  last  town, 
a  stock  of  valuable  supplies  was  quickly  evacuated  to  Las- 
signy,  a  short  distance  still  farther  to  the  rear.  Noyon 
quickly  became  a  center  of  feverish  activity  and  the  focus 
of  Red  Cross  efforts  on  the  third  day  of  the  battle.  From 


THE  RED  CROSS  ON  THE  FIELD  OF  HONOR     145 

it  Red  Cross  cars  worked,  both  day  and  night,  evacuating 
men  and  women  and  goods. 

The  line  held  across  Montdidier,  RToyon,  and  even 
Lassigny  for  a  bare  twenty-four  hours  more;  for  on  the 
fourth  day  of  the  retreat  all  three  had  to  be  abandoned, 
and  new  quarters  established  on  a  line  closer  to  Paris 
than  any  of  the  others;  it  passed  through  both  Beauvais 
and  Compiegne,  where  emergency  Red  Cross  headquarters 
were  once  again  established;  but  for  the  last  time.  This 
line  was  destined  to  be  a  permanent  one.  The  retreat  was 
slowing  down,  slowly  but  very  surely  halting.  And  our 
Eed  Cross  with  our  Yanks  and  their  Allies  were  "  dig- 
ging in." 

The  impressions  which  the  great  German  drive  made 
upon  the  minds  of  our  workers  who  fell  back  before  it 
will  remain  with  them  as  long  as  thought  and  memory 
cling  —  the  vast  conglomeration  of  men,  tired,  dirty,  un- 
shaven; men  and  animals  and  inanimate  things,  moving 
quickly,  slowly,  intermittently,  moving  not  at  all,  but 
choking  and  halting  all  progress  —  with  the  deadly  per- 
versity of  inanimate  things;  men  not  merely  tired,  dirty 
and  unshaven,  but  sick  and  wounded  almost  unto  death, 
moaning  and  sobbing  under  the  fearful  onslaughts  of  pain 
unbearable,  sometimes  death  itself,  a  blessed  relief,  and 
marked  by  a  stop  by  the  roadside,  a  hurriedly  dug  grave, 
prayers,  the  closing  earth,  one  other  soul  gone  from  the 
millions  in  order  that  hundreds  of  millions  of  other  souls 
may  live  in  peace  and  safety.  Such  traffic,  such  turmoil, 
such  variety,  such  blinding,  choking  dust.  Army  supply 
trains,  motor  trucks,  guns,  soldiers,  civilians,  on  foot  and 
mounted,  of  vehicles  of  every  variety  conceivable  and 
many  unconceivable;  motor  cars  upon  which  the  genius 
of  a  Renault  or  a  Ford  had  been  expended ;  wheelbarrows, 
baby  carriages,  sledges,  more  motor  cars,  ranging  in  age 
from  two  weeks  to  fourteen  years,  dog  carts,  wagons 
creaking  and  groaning  behind  badly  scared  mules  and 


146     WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

worse  scared  negroes  who  wondered  why  they  had  ever 
left  the  corn  brake  —  for  this.  Such  traffic,  such  life. 
And  then  —  again  and  again  death,  more  graves,  more 
prayers,  more  men's  souls  poured  into  the  vague  unknown. 

And  in  the  midst  of  death,  life.  Here  in  this  wagon 
is  a  haggard-looking  woman.  The  babe  which  she  clasps 
to  her  breast  is  but  four  hours  old;  but  the  woman  is  a 
hundred  —  seemingly.  She  stretches  her  long,  bare  arms 
out  from  the  flapping  curtains  at  the  rear  of  the  Red  Cross 
camionette.  A  group  of  poilus,  in  extremely  dirty  uni- 
forms, catches  her  eyes.  She  shrieks  to  them  in  her  native 
French. 

"  My  poilus,"  she  cries,  "  you  shall  return.  God  wills 
it.  You  shall  return  —  you  and  my  little  son/7  and  falls, 
sobbing  incoherently,  into  the  bottom  of  the  bumping 
ambulance. 

An  old  woman  with  her  one  precious  possession  saved 
—  a  bewhiskered  goat  —  hears  her,  and  crosses  herself. 
A  three-ton  motor  truck  falls  into  a  deep  ditch  and  is 
abandoned,  with  all  of  its  contents.  This  is  no  hour  for 
salvage.  The  dust  from  -all  the  traffic  grows  thicker  and 
thicker.  Yet  it  is  naught  with  the  blinding  white  dust 
which  arises  from  this  shell  —  which  almost  struck  into  the 
heart  of  one  of  the  main  lines  of  traffic.  The  racket  is 
terrific;  yet  above  it  one  catches  the  shrieking  cry  of  the 
young  mother  in  the  camionette.  Her  reason  hangs  in 
the  balance.  And  as  the  noise  subsides  a  detachment  of 
poilus  falls  out  beside  the  roadside  and  begins  opening 
more  graves.  The  bodies  aim  was  quite  as  good  as  he 
might  have  hoped. 

In  and  out  of  these  streams  —  this  fearful  turmoil  of 
traffic,  if  you  please,  our  Red  Cross  warped  and  woofed 
its  fabric  of  human  godlike  love  and  sympathy.  With  its 
headquarters  established  with  a  fair  degree  of  permanency 
both  at  Compiegne  and  Beauvais,  it  increased  its  atten- 
tion to  the  soldiery.  It  set  up  a  line  of  canteens  and  soup- 


THE  RED  CROSS  ON  THE  FIELD  OF  HONOR     147 

kitchens  along  the  roadside  all  the  way  from  Beauvais, 
and  these  served  as  many  as  30,000  men  a  day  with  hot 
drinks,  cigarettes,  and  food  of  a  large  variety,  and  showed 
a  democratic  spirit  of  service  in  that  they  gave,  without 
question  or  without  hesitation,  to  Frenchmen,  to  Britons, 
to  Italians,  and  to  Americans  alike.  The  men  and  the 
girls  in  the  canteens  were  blind  to  things,  but  their  ears 
were  ever  alert,  and  they  heard  only  the  voices  of  the 
tired  and  the  distressed  asking  for  food  and  drink. 

At  Compiegne  the  Bed  Cross  took  over  the  largest  hotel, 
which,  like  the  rest  of  the  town,  had  been  evacuated  so 
hurriedly  that  parts  of  a  well-cooked  meal  still  remained 
upon  the  tables  of  the  great  salle-a-manger.  Instantly  it 
rubbed  its  magic  lamp  and  transformed  the  hostelry  into 
a  giant  warehouse,  infirmary,  and,  for  its  own  workers,  a 
mess  hall  and  barracks.  And  as  the  endless  convoys  rolled 
by  its  doors  and  down  into  the  narrow,  twisting,  stone- 
paved  streets  of  Compiegne,  these  workers  stood  at  the 
curb  opening  up  case  ofter  case  of  canned  foodstuffs  and 
tossed  or  thrust  the  cans  into  the  waiting  fingers  of  the 
half-starved  drivers  of  the  trucks  and  camions. 

Individual  initiative  —  that  precious  asset  of  every 
American  —  had  its  fullest  opportunity  those  days  at 
Compiegne.  It  mattered  not  what  a  man  had  been  or 
what  he  might  become;  it  was  what  he  made  of  himself 
that  very  hour  that  counted.  A  minister  who  had  come 
over  from  America  to  do  chaplain  service  for  the  army 
bruised  his  poor  unskilled  fingers  time  and  time  again  as 
he  struggled,  with  the  help  of  a  clerk  from  the  Paris  offices, 
with  the  stout  packing  cases.  Departmental  and  bureau 
lines  everywhere  within  the  Bed  Cross  had  been  abolished 
in  order  to  meet  the  supreme  emergency.  Bank  melted 
quickly  away  before  the  demand  for  manual  labor.  The 
Bed  Cross  showed  the  flexibility  of  its  organization,  and 
Compiegne  was,  in  itself,  a  superb  test. 

It  was  down  at  the  railroad  station  in  that  same  fas- 
cinating, mediaeval  city  of  old  France  that  a  portable 


148     WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

kitchen,  hauled  out  on  the  great  north  road  up  from 
Paris,  with  three  American  business  men  fresh  from  their 
desks  in  New  York,  hanging  perilously  on  to  its  side  like 
volunteer  fire  laddies  of  long  ago  going  on  old  "  Rough 
and  Ready  "  to  a  regular  whale  of  a  blaze,  was  set  up 
on  the  exact  spot  where  one  Jeanne  d'Arc  once  had  been 
taken  prisoner.  Its  mission  of  salvation  was  far  more 
prosaic ;  yet,  in  its  own  humble  way,  it  too  functioned,  and 
functioned  extremely  well.  It  served  food  and  hot  drinks 
to  more  than  ten  thousand  soldiers  each  day. 

The  variety  of  opportunity,  of  service  to  be  rendered, 
was  hardly  less  than  stupendous.  For  instance,  when  word 
came  to  Compiegne  from  Ressons  that  the  French  would 
finally  be  compelled  to  evacuate  their  hospital  there  and 
lacked  the  proper  transportation  facilities,  our  Red  Cross 
stepped  promptly  into  the  breach  and  moved  out  the  pre- 
cious supplies.  It  did  not  ask  whether  or  not  there  were 
American  boys  there  in  the  wards  of  the  French  hospital 
—  there  probably  were,  the  two  armies  being  brigaded  to- 
gether pretty  closely  at  that  time ;  it  sought  no  fine  distinc- 
tions —  in  that  time,  in  that  emergency,  the  French  were 
us,  we  were  the  French  —  and  so  sent  its  trucks  hurrying 
up  to  Ressons,  equipped  with  a  full  complement  of  work- 
ers. And  these  worked  until  the  retreating  Allies  had 
established  a  third  line  in  the  rear  of  them  and  the  advanc- 
ing Germans  were  but  two  hours  away. 

All  this  while  the  transformed  hotel  at  Compiegne  re- 
mained a  huge  center  for  these  multifold  forms  of  Red 
Cross  relief.  It,  too,  formed  a  clearing  house  for  assist- 
ance. Its  ears  were  alert  to  the  vast  necessities  of  the 
moment.  They  listened  for  opportunities  of  service. 
There  were  many  such.  A  refugee  brought  word  that  an 
old  couple  in  a  farmhouse  full  ten  miles  distant  had  no 
way  of  retreating  before  the  onrushing  Germans.  With- 
out a  minute's  delay  a  camionette  was  dispatched  to  the 
spot  and  it  brought  the  weeping,  grateful  pair  and  most  of 


THE  RED  CROSS  ON  THE  FIELD  OF  HONOR     149 

their  personal  belongings  to  safety;  while  other  cars  were 
sent  in  various  directions  to  seek  out  the  opportunites  of 
performing  similar  services.  ...  As  this  situation  eased 
itself,  this  transportation  equipment  was  turned  toward 
the  carrying  of  supplies  and  tobacco  to  the  weary  men  of 
isolated  batteries  and  units  along  the  ever  changing  battle 
front.  It  was  an  almost  unceasing  task,  and  the  few 
short  hours  that  the  Ked  Cross  workers  forced  themselves 
into  an  all-necessary  sleep  were  all  spent  in  the  caves  and 
dbris  of  Compiegne;  for  the  boche  aviators  had  an  un- 
pleasant habit  of  making  frequent  nocturnal  visits  to  it. 

At  Beauvais,  simultaneous  with  the  establishment  of 
the  headquarters  at  Compiegne,  the  American  Eed  Cross 
opened  both  military  and  civilian  hospitals,  together  with 
a  rest  station  of  some  three  hundred  beds  for  slightly 
wounded  soldiers  and  for  casuals;  as  men  detached  from 
their  units  are  generally  known.  Over  a  bonfire  in  a 
small  hut  the  workers  cooked  food  and  served  it  hot  to 
the  soldiers  and  the  refugees.  In  fact  this  town  had  been 
made  a  clearing  station  for  these  last.  Each  incoming 
train  brought  more  and  more  of  these  pitiful  folk  into 
the  town,  where  they  were  halted  for  a  time  before  being 
sent  on  other  trains  to  the  districts  of  France  quite  remote 
from  any  immediate  possibility  of  invasion.  In  the  few 
hours  which  refugees  spent  in  Beauvais  our  Eed  Cross 
made  some  definite  provision  for  their  comfort.  It  se- 
cured a  huge  building,  obtained  several  tons  of  hay,  and 
after  establishing  a  rough  form  of  bus  service  with  its 
motor  cars,  transported  them  from  the  station  to  its  hastily 
transformed  barracks  for  a  night's  rest,  and  then,  on  the 
following  morning,  back  to  the  railway  station  and  the  out- 
going trains  to  the  south  and  west.  And  with  the  bar- 
racks and  the  hay  cots  went  blankets  and  food,  of  course. 
It  was  crude  comfort;  but  it  was  infinitely  better  than 
spending  the  night  on  the  stone  floor  of  a  damp  and  un- 
heated  railroad  station. 


150     WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

At  RTiort,  where  a  small  store  of  Red  Cross  supplies  had 
been  sent  to  a  designated  delegate,  the  delegate  on  an 
hour's  notice  fed  four  hundred  refugees,  while  at  Clermont 
the  American  Red  Cross  supplied  food  to  a  nunnery  that 
had  opened  its  doors  to  refugees.  So  it  went.  The  variety 
of  services  was  indeed  all  but  infinite;  while  through  the 
entire  nightmare  of  activity,  the  workers  were  thrust  upon 
their  own  initiative  —  that  precious  American  birthright, 
—  time  and  time  again.  Their  only  orders  were  short 
ones;  they  were  to  help  any  one  and  every  one  in  need 
of  assistance. 

How  the  French  viewed  this  aid  and  how  they  came  to 
rely  upon  it,  is  best  illustrated,  perhaps,  by  the  testimony 
of  a  hardware  merchant  of  Soissons  whose  house  had  been 
shelled.  Without  hesitation  he  came  direct  to  the  Red 
Cross  headquarters  for  help,  saying: 

"  I  come  to  you  first  because  it  has  become  natural  for 
us  to  go  to  the  Americans  first  when  we  are  in  need." 

And  from  a  refugee  station  near  Peronne,  a  Red  Cross 
worker  reported: 

"  They  are  all  looking  to  me,  as  a  representative  of  the 
American  Red  Cross,  to  act  as  a  proper  godfather." 

As  the  days  passed,  the  work  in  this  vital  area  was 
greatly  expanded  and  increased.  The  refugees  gradually 
were  evacuated  through  to  Paris  and  beyond,  while  the 
service  in  the  valleys  of  the  Somme  and  the  Oise  became 
more  strictly  military  in  character.  It  became  better  or- 
ganized, too.  But  I  feel  that  this  last  is  not  the  point. 
We  Americans  are  rather  apt  to  place  too  great  a  stress 
upon  organization.  And  the  fact  remains  that  the  Red 
Cross  in  its  first  military  emergency,  with  very  little  or- 
ganization, indeed,  attained  a  proficiency  in  service  far 
greater  than  even  its  most  optimistic  adherents  had  ever 
dreamed  it  might  attain. 

I  have  turned  the  course  of  my  book  for  a  time  away 
from  the  direct  service  of  our  Red  Cross  to  our  own  army 


THE  RED  CROSS  ON  THE  FIELD  OF  HONOR      151 

because  I  wanted  you  to  see  how  and  where  that  direct- 
service  field  was  founded.  Erom  that  beginning,  at  the 
start  of  the  German  drive,  it  grew  rapidly  and  steadily 
and,  as  I  have  just  said,  with  certain  very  definite  benefits 
of  organization.  The  drive  halted,  became  a  thing  of 
memory,  was  supplanted  by  another  drive  —  of  a  different 
sort  and  in  the  opposite  direction  —  a  drive  that  did  not 
cease  and  hardly  halted  until  the  eleventh  day  of  Novem- 
ber, 1918.  That  was  the  drive  so  brilliantly  marked  with 
those  epoch-making  tablets  of  the  superb  romance  of  our 
American  adventure  overseas  —  Chateau-Thierry,  Veaux, 
Saint  Mihiel,  the  Argonne  —  many  other  conflicts,  too. 

In  all  of  these  the  American  Red  Cross  played  its  part, 
and  seeks  no  greater  testimony  than  that  so  generously  vol- 
unteered by  the  very  men  who  received  its  benefits  —  the 
doughboys  at  the  front.  They  know,  and  have  not  been 
hesitant  to  tell.  My  own  sources  of  information  are  for 
the  most  part  a  bit  official  —  the  records  made  by  the  Ked 
Cross  workers  in  the  field.  These  tell  more  eloquently 
than  I  can  of  the  work  that  was  done  there  and  so  I  shall 
quote  quite  freely  from  them. 

"  My  billet  has  stout  cement  walls,  a  mighty  husky 
ceiling  and  a  dirt  floor,"  writes  Lieutenant  J.  H.  Gibson 
of  Caldwell,  Idaho,  who  was  attached  to  the  Thirty-third 
Division.  "  The  furniture  consists  of  my  cot  and  sundry 
goods  boxes,  camouflaged  with  blankets  to  make  seats,  and 
I  have  frequent  callers.  Generally  they  are  casuals - 
men  who  have  lost  their  organizations  and  don't  know 
where  to  go  or  what  to  do.  I  had  three  of  them  the  first 
day,  footsore,  weary,  and  homesick.  I  rustled  them  a 
place  to  get  mess,  loaded  them  into  my  car,  and  drove  them 
to  the  nearest  railroad  railhead,  where  I  found  a  truck 
belonging  to  their  Division,  stopped  it,  and  got  them 
aboard." 

Under  date  of  October  13,  1918,  Lieutenant  Gibson  fur- 
ther wrote: 

"  This  has  been  another  of  those  days  spent  most  in 


152     WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

quarters,  busy  with  paper  work.  I  find  a  thundering  lot 
of  letter  writing  necessary  in  connection  with  my  Eed 
Cross  duties.  I  am  the  Home  Communication  and  Home 
Service  Representative  for  the  Division  in  addition  to  being 
division  '  scrounger.'  When  any  of  the  folks  back  home 
want  information  about  their  soldier  boys  I  am  supposed 
to  furnish  it  and,  vice  versa,  when  any  of  the  soldier  boys 
have  home  problems  I  am  expected  to  help  them.  While  I 
am  resting  I  act  as  Division  shopper,  for  fighting  men  need 
things  just  the  same  as  ordinary  mortals,  and  I  take  their 
orders,  have  the  goods  bought  through  the  Red  Cross  in 
Paris,  and  distribute  them,  collecting  the  money.  When 
the  Division  is  in  action  I  administer  comfort  to  the 
wounded  in  addition  to  gathering  data  as  to  the  deaths. 
Between  times  I  scout  roads,  carry  dispatches,  and  help  the 
sanitary  train  generally.  If  the  devil  has  work  only  for 
idle  hands  he  can  pass  me  by. 

"  At  dressing  stations  we  endeavor  to  do  two  things ;  to 
re-dress  the  wounds  and  to  administer  some  nourishment. 
The  men  wounded  have  received  first  aid  treatment  on  tho 
field  or  at  the  battalion-aid  post  and  they  walk  or  are  car- 
ried on  litters  to  the  dressing  station.  There  we  put  them 
into  ambulances  or  trucks  and  they  go  out  to  the  evacuation 
hospitals.  My  part  of  the  job  was  the  nourishment  end, 
and  so  I  got  a  detail  of  men,  improvised  a  fire,  stole  a  water 
bucket  from  another  Division  which  had  more  than  it 
needed,  opened  up  some  rations,  and  soon  was  serving  hot 
coffee,  bread,  and  jam  to  the  wounded,  endeavoring  the 
while  to  kid  a  grin  into  the  face  of  each.  The  last  was  the 
easiest  job  for  our  fellows  were  sure  gritty.  I  think  I 
batted  a  thousand  per  cent  on  the  smile  end  of  the  game." 

Under  date  of  October  24,  1918: 

"  Back  from  Paris.  I  rolled  out  fairly  early  and  got 
my  boxes  opened.  The  boys  certainly  appreciate  the  Red 
Cross  shopping  service  and  fairly  swarmed  in  after  the 
articles  we  had  procured  for  them.  There  was  everything 
imaginable  in  the  lot  —  watches,  boots,  cigars,  cigarettes, 


THE  RED  CROSS  ON  THE  FIELD  OF  HONOR     153 

and  candy  being  the  prime  favorites.  One  buddy  had  a 
mandolin  and  another  some  French  grammars.  I  was 
overwhelmed  and  had  to  get  an  assistant  detailed,  for  in 
addition  to  making  deliveries  I  had  to  take  orders. 
Every  one  wanted  to  order  something.  About  sixty-five 
additional  orders  were  placed  to-day  and  I  didn't  even  have 
time  to  open  my  mail." 

A  week  later : 

"  I  spent  the  day  at  my  billet,  busy  with  the  correspond- 
ence which  my  position  with  the  Red  Cross  necessitates  and 
which,  by  the  way,  is  a  little  difficult  to  handle  in  view  of 
the  fact  that  I  am  minus  every  convenience.  Letter  files, 
index  cards,  guides,  and  cabinets  are  about  as  scarce  as 
hen's  teeth.  It  is  wonderful,  however,  just  what  a  man 
can  do  without.  A  small  goods  box  will  make  a  very  pass- 
able letter  file,  and  a  cigar  box,  the  kind  that  fifty  come  in, 
can  be  made  into  a  reasonably  useful  card-index  tray.  I 
was  wise  enough  to  bring  a  small  typewriter  from  the 
states  and  it  has  proven  absolutely  indispensable.  .  .  . 
The  men  are  in  rest  billets  and  the  delouser  and  shower 
baths  are  busy  cleaning  them  up.  The  men  come  in 
squads  to  the  building  which  houses  the  equipment,  strip 
off  their  clothing  which  goes  to  the  delouser,  where  they 
are  dry-baked  at  a  temperature  sufficiently  high  to  kill  the 
nits.  While  this  is  being  done  they  are  thoroughly  scrub- 
,bing  themselves,  and  when  they  are  through  with  the  bath, 
their  clothes  are  finished  and  ready  to  be  put  on.  The  Red 
Cross  never  did  a  better  thing  than  when  it  furnished  this 
equipment  to  my  division." 

Permit  me  to  interrupt  Lieutenant  Gibson's  narrative  to 
explain  in  somewhat  greater  detail  the  operation  of  these 
Red  Cross  portable  cleansing  plants  which  added  so  greatly 
to  the  comfort  of  the  doughboys,  not  only  in  the  field,  but, 
in  many  cases,  in  rest  billets  or  camps  far  back  from  it. 
It  so  happened  that  many  times  the  men  in  the  front  lines 
would  go  weeks  and  even  a  full  month  without  the  oppor- 
tunity of  a  decent  bath.  Such  is  war.  It  is  a  known  fact 


154     WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

that  the  boys  of  the  Third  Division  once  spent  a  full  five 
weeks  in  the  trenches  without  even  changing  their  clothes, 
after  which  they  were  sent  behind  to  a  Ked  Cross  cleansing 
station  and  bathed  and  refitted  with  clean  clothing  before 
being  sent  back  again  —  with  what  joy  and  refreshment 
can  easily  be  imagined. 

The  type  of  portable  shower  used  in  many  cases  was 
generally  known  as  the  "  eight-headshower "  or  field 
douche.  It  consisted  of  a  simply  designed  water  tank 
with  fire  box,  in  which  might  be  burned  coal  or  wood,  a 
pipe  line  with  eight  sprays,  and  flooring  under  the  sprays. 
The  thing  was  easily  adjusted.  In  a  building  with  water 
supply  it  was  a  simple  matter  indeed  to  connect  the  tank 
with  the  water  supply;  while  in  the  open  field,  where 
there  might  be  neither  water  pressure  nor  water  connection, 
the  precious  fluid  could  be  poured  into  the  tank  with 
buckets.  The  apparatus  was  durable  and  reasonably 
"  fool-proof." 

During  the  Chateau-Thierry  drive  nine  of  these  port- 
able showers  were  set  up  by  our  Eed  Cross,  and  in  one 
week,  seven  thousand  men  were  brought  back  from  the 
firing  line,  bathed,  given  clean  clothes,  and  sent  back  re- 
freshed mentally  and  morally  as  well  as  physically.  Sixty 
men  an  hour  could  easily  be  bathed  in  one  of  these  plants, 
and  two  gallons  of  water  were  allowed  to  each  man. 

The  delouser,  as  the  army  quickly  came  to  know  the 
sterilizing  plant,  almost  always  accompanied  the  portable 
shower  upon  its  travels.  It,  too,  was  a  simple  contraption ; 
a  great  cylinder,  into  which  the  dirty  clothing  was  tightly 
crammed  until  it  could  hold  not  one  ounce  more,  and  live 
steam  poured  in,  under  a  pressure  of  from  sixty  to  one 
hundred  and  fifteen  pounds  to  the  square  inch.  This  was 
sufficient  to  kill  all  the  vermin ;  and,  in  some  cases,  the  bac- 
teria as  well,  although  this  last  was  not  guaranteed.  The 
delouser,  with  a  capacity  of  fifty  suits  a  day,  could  almost 
keep  pace  with  one  of  the  shower  baths,  and  both  could  be 
set  up  or  taken  down  in  ten  minutes. 


THE  RED  CROSS  ON  THE  FIELD  OF  HONOR       155 

A  shower  bath  mounted  on  a  Ford  was  one  of  the  best 
friends  of  the  Eighty-first  Division  as  it  played  its  big  part 
in  the  defeat  of  the  Hun.  It  made  its  first  appearance  in 
September,  when  the  Division  was  stationed  in  the  Vosges, 
with  headquarters  at  St.  Die.  After  a  few  hard  days  in 
the  trenches  the  men  would  return  to  their  headquarters, 
well  to  the  rear  of  the  lines,  and  beg  for  some  sort  of  bathing 
facilities  —  and  these,  apparently,  were  not  to  be  found. 

Captain  Richard  A.  Bullock  was  our  Red  Cross  man 
with  the  Eighty-first.  It  bothered  him  that  the  men  of 
his  Division  could  not  have  so  simple  a  comfort  when  they 
asked  for  it  and  needed  it  so  much.  He  determined  to  try 
and  solve  the  problem,  and  so  found  his  way  down  to  the  big 
American  Red  Cross  warehouse  and  there  acquired  one  of 
the  portable  field  equipments  such  as  I  have  just  described. 
It  was  a  comparatively  easy  trick  to  mount  the  device  on  a 
Eord,  after  which  Bullock  paraded  the  entire  outfit  up  and 
down  the  lines  of  the  Eighty-first  and  as  close  to  the  front- 
line trenches  as  fires  were  ever  permitted.  In  a  mighty 
short  time  he  could  get  the  bath  in  order  and  showering 
merrily,  and  when  all  the  men  who  wanted  to  bathe  had 
been  accommodated  the  contraption  would  move  on. 

For  the  camps  where  larger  numbers  of  men  must  be 
bathed,  the  Red  Cross,  through  its  Mechanical  Equipment 
Service  of  its  Army  and  Navy  Department,  provided  even 
larger  facilities,  although  still  of  standardized  size  and 
pattern.  This  was  known  as  the  pavilion  bath  and  disin- 
fecting plant  and  could  easily  take  care  of  150  an  hour. 
Where  the  sterilization  of  their  clothing  was  not  necessary 
this  number  was  very  greatly  increased.  In  fact  at  one 
time  a  record  was  made  in  one  of  the  large  field  camps  of 
bathing  608  men  in  two  hours  through  a  single  one  of  these 
plants.  In  another,  which  was  in  operation  at  the  Third 
Aviation  Center,  3,626  men  bathed  in  one  week  in  a  total 
of  twenty-eight  operating  hours  and  some  4,200  men  in  the 
second  week.  It  was  estimated  that  the  plants  could,  if 


156  WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

necessary,  be  operated  a  full  twenty-four  hours  a  day ;  but 
even  on  the  part-time  basis  it  was  an  economical  comfort. 
It  required  the  services  of  a  sergeant  and  three  privates  — 
whose  time  cost  nothing  whatsoever  —  to  operate  it,  and, 
based  on  fuel  costs,  each  man  bathed  at  an  expense,  to  the 
Red  Cross,  of  less  than  one  cent. 

They  were  handled  with  military  simplicity  and  expedi- 
tion. The  men,  told  off  into  details,  entered  the  first  room 

—  the  entire  outfit  was  housed  in  a  standardized  Red 
Cross  tent  of  khaki  —  where  they  removed  their  clothes 
and  placed  them  within  the  sterilizer,  then  went  direct  into 
the  bath.     While  they  bathed  their  garments  were  cleansed, 
sterilized,  and  dried,  and  the  two  functions  were  so  syn- 
chronized that  the  clothes  were  ready  as  quickly  as  the  men 

—  and  the  entire  process  completed  within  the  half  hour. 

Return,  if  you  will,  for  a  final  minute  with  Gibson  of 
the  Red  Cross,  up  with  the  Thirty-third  Division  at  the 
front.  I  find  a  final  entry  in  his  diary  record  of  his 
activities  nearly  three  weeks  after  the  signing  of  the  armis- 
tice; to  be  ex«act,  on  November  29.  It  runs  after  this 
fashion : 

"  A  couple  of  days  before  Thanksgiving  I  accompanied 
the  Division  Graves  Registration  Officer  to  the  woods  north 
of  Verdun  where  our  Division  had  been  heavily  engaged 
during  the  month  of  October  and  where  we  had  quite  a 
list  of  missing.  The  fighting  had  been  intense  through 
these  woods,  portions  of  them  changing  hands  five  or  six 
times  in  the  course  of  three  weeks,  and  naturally  it  was 
impossible  to  keep  careful  track  of  all  the  brave  fellows 
who  fell.  Delving  into  the  earth,  uncovering  rotten 
corpses,  and  searching  for  proper  marks  of  identity  is  as 
gruesome  and  as  horrible  a  job  as  could  be  imagined  and  I 
must  confess  my  nerve  was  a  bit  shattered  at  the  close  of 
the  second  day.  .  .  ." 

Yet  not  all  the  work  of  the  Division  men  of  the  Red  Cross 
was  gruesome  and  horrible.  The  war  had  its  humors  as 


THE  RED  CROSS  ON  THE  FIELD  OF  HONOR      157 

well  as  tragedies,  major  and  minor.  For  instance,  how 
about  the  job  of  the  Red  Cross  man  with  the  Seventy- 
seventh  Division,  when  he  found  himself  asked  to  become 
stage  manager  for  a  troup  of  seventeen  girls  —  real  girls, 
mind  you,  none  of  them  the  make-believe  thing  with  bass 
voices  and  flat  feet.  He,  like  many  of  his  fellows,  found 
that  the  hardest  part  of  his  job  came  after  the  signing  of 
the  armistice,  when  time  hung  heavy  indeed  upon  the 
hands  of  the  doughboys  and  to  keep  them  occupied  was  a 
task  worthy  of  the  best  thoughts  of  men  —  and  angels. 
The  mere  job  of  serving  coffee  and  chocolate  from  the  can- 
teens, establishing  reading  rooms,  and  distributing  cig- 
arettes, magazines,  and  newspapers  ceased  to  be  sufficient. 
The  boys  were  fairly  "  fed  up  "  with  these  things.  And 
with  the  continued  rain  and  mud  and  damp  of  Manonville 
getting  upon  the  nerves  of  the  Seventh,  they  demanded 
something  new  and  mighty  good  in  the  way  of  amusement. 

Captain  Biernatzki  was  the  Red  Cross  man  with  the 
Division.  He  quickly  sensed  the  situation,  and,  taking  his 
little  motor  car,  drove  to  Toul  not  far  distant,  and,  as  you 
already  know,  a  Red  Cross  center  of  no  small  importance. 
He  began  at  once  signing  up  dramatic  talent  among  the 
American  Red  Cross  girls  there  in  the  canteens  and  the  hos- 
pitals, and  after  securing  motor  transportation  for  the  entire 
troupe,  bore  it  north  to  his  own  Division.  The  officers  of 
the  Seventh  were  in  on  the  plan  and  heartily  supported  it, 
and  as  an  earnest  of  their  support  had  the  visiting  ladies  of 
the  Red  Cross  Road  Company  No.  1  lunch  at  a  special  and 
wonderful  mess  on  the  occasion  of  their  Thespian  debut. 

"  One  of  the  girls  was  a  wonderful  singer,"  said  Bier- 
natzki afterward  in  describing  the  incident.  "  Another 
proved  a  marvel  in  handling  the  men,  making  them  sing 
and  keeping  them  laughing,  and  there  were  one  or  two 
others,  too,  who  did  their  bit  in  a  most  creditable  manner. 
One  of  our  troupe  had  brought  a  clothes  basket  full  of  fudge 
which  was  thrown  out  to  a  forest  of  waving  palms,  while 
the  remaining  members  of  the  party  were  sufficiently  decor- 


158     WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

ative  and  charming  to  put  the  finishing  touches  to  the  affair 
by  their  mere  presence." 

It  seems  a  far  cry  from  the  Red  Cross  extending  succor 
to  a  man  wounded  on  the  field  of  battle  toward  staging  a 
show  in  a  big  rest  camp,  yet  I  am  not  sure  that  the  last, 
in  its  way,  did  not  do  its  part  toward  the  winning  of  the 
war  quite  as  much  as  the  first. 

Of  course  our  American  Red  Cross  was  not  primarily 
represented  in  canteen  work  in  the  actual  zones  of  fighting ; 
this  function,  by  the  ruling  of  the  United  States  Army  and 
the  War  Department,  you  will  perhaps  remember,  was 
given  almost  entirely  to  the  Young  Men's  Christian  Asso- 
ciation and  to  the  Salvation  Army.  There  were,  however, 
a  few  exceptions  to  this  general  rule.  For  instance,  at 
Colombes-les-Belles,  an  important  aviation  station,  ten  or 
twelve  miles  south  of  Toul,  I  saw  a  very  complete  Red 
Cross  equipment  at  a  field  camp  which  at  no  time  was  far 
removed  from  the  front-line  fighting.  It  consisted  of  a 
canteen,  which  served  as  high  as  from  two  thousand  to  three 
thousand  men  a  day,  and  even  as  late  as  March,  1919,  was 
still  serving  from  seven  to  eight  hundred ;  an  officers'  club, 
to  which  was  attached  an  officers'  mess,  feeding  some  sev- 
enty men  a  day,  and  a  billeting  barracks  for  the  nine  Red 
Cross  women  stationed  at  the  place.  There  also  was  a 
huge  hangar  which,  with  a  good  floor  and  appropriate 
decorations,  had  been  transformed  into  a  corking  amuse- 
ment center.  This  last  was  not  under  the  direct  charge  of 
the  American  Red  Cross,  yet  our  Red  Cross  girls  were  the 
chief  factors  in  making  it  go.  They  danced  there  night 
after  night  with  our  boys.  In  fact,  in  order  to  have  suffi- 
cient partners,  it  was  necessary  to  scour  the  country  for 
twenty  miles  roundabout  with  motor  cars  and  bring  in  all 
the  Red  Cross  and  Y.  M.  C.  A.  girls  that  were  available. 
It  seems  that  it  really  is  part  of  a  Red  Cross  girl's  job  to  be 
on  her  feet  eight  hours  a  day  and  then  to  dance  full  ten 
miles  each  night. 

This   Colombes-les-Belles   canteen  originally  had  been 


THE  RED  CROSS  ON  THE  FIELD  OF  HONOR      159 

established  in  the  very  heart  of  the  grimy  little  village,  but 
when  the  Twenty-eighth  (Pennsylvania)  Division  came  to 
the  place  on  the  thirteenth  of  January,  1919,  it  took  the 
old  canteen  structure  for  division  headquarters,  but  squared 
the  account  by  building  the  Red  Cross  a  newer  and  bigger 
canteen  group  in  the  open  field. 

"  I  can't  give  too  much  praise  to  the  Red  Cross  personnel 
that  have  been  assigned  to  this  particularly  isolated  spot," 
the  colonel  in  charge  of  the  flying  field  told  me  on  the  occa- 
sion of  my  visit  to  it.  "  I  know  that  the  women  must  have 
been  fearfully  lonely  out  here;  but  they  have  never  com- 
plained. On  the  contrary,  they  have  given  generously  and 
unstintingly  of  their  own  time  and  energies  in  order  that 
time  should  not  hang  heavily  upon  the  hands  of  the  men. 
The  problem  of  amusement  for  the  aviator  is  a  peculiarly 
difficult  one.  He  has  actually  only  two  or  three  hours  of 
service  each  day,  and  the  rest  of  his  waking  hours  he  must 
be  kept  ready  and  fit,  mentally  as  well  as  physically,  for  his 
job,  which  requires  all  that  a  man  may  possess  of  nerve  and 
judgment  and  quick  wit.  The  Red  Cross  women  quickly 
came  to  sense  this  portion  of  our  problem  and  in  helping  in 
its  assistance  they  have  been  of  infinite  assistance." 

Yet,  while  service  in  a  field  camp  such  as  this  at  Col- 
ombes-les-Belles  represents  a  high  degree  of  fidelity  and 
persistence  and,  in  many,  many  cases,  real  courage  as  well, 
the  real  test  of  high  courage  for  the  Red  Cross  man,  as  well 
as  for  the  soldier,  came  in  the  trenches  or  the  open  fighting, 
which,  in  the  case  of  our  Yanks,  was  brought  in  the  final 
weeks  and  months  of  the  war  to  supplant  the  intrenched 
lines  of  the  earlier  months.  Here  was  a  man,  a  canteen 
worker  for  the  American  Red  Cross,  who  suddenly  found  it 
his  job  to  hold  the  hand  of  a  boy  private  of  a  Pennsylvania 
regiment  while  the  surgeon  amputated  his  arm  at  the  shoul- 
der. War  is  indeed  a  grim  business.  The  Red  Cross 
workers  in  the  field  saw  it  in  its  grimmest  phases;  but 
spared  themselves  many  of  its  worst  horrors  by  virtue  of 


160  WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

forgetting  themselves  and  their  nerves  in  the  one  possible 
way  —  in  hard  and  unrelenting  work,  night  and  day.  They 
found  unlimited  possibilities  for  service  —  now  as  canteen 
workers  and  now  as  ambulance  drivers,  again  as  stretcher 
bearers,  as  assistants  to  the  over-burdened  field  surgeons,  as 
couriers  or  even  as  staff  officers,  and  fulfilled  these  possibili- 
ties with  a  quickness,  a  skill,  and  a  desire  that  excited  the 
outspoken  admiration  of  the  army  men  who  watched  them. 

I  said  a  good  deal  at  the  beginning  of  this  chapter  about 
the  Second  Division  and  the  work  of  young  Captain  Kim- 
ball,  of  Boston,  with  it.  The  Second  —  which  was  very 
well  known  to  the  home  nation  across  the  seas  —  had  an 
earnest  rival  in  the  First,  made  up  almost  entirely  of 
seasoned  troopers  of  the  Regular  Army.  And  Captain 
George  S.  Karr,  who  was  attached  to  the  First,  had  some 
real  opportunities  of  seeing  the  work  of  the  Red  Cross  in 
the  field,  himself. 

"  It  was  when  our  Division  was  on  the  Montdidier  front 
and  preparations  were  being  made  for  the  American  offen- 
sive against  Cantigny,"  says  Captain  Karr.  "  One  of  the 
commanding  officers  called  at  the  outpost  station  where  I 
made  my  headquarters  and  asked  if  I  could  get  him  three 
thousand  packages  of  cigarettes,  the  same  number  of  sticks 
of  chocolate,  lemons,  and  tartar ic  acid  for  the  wounded  who 
would  be  coming  in  within  the  next  few  hours.  It  was 
necessary  to  deliver  these  in  Chrepoix,  where  the  outpost 
was  located,  within  twenty-four  hours. 

"  Lieutenant  Bero  of  the  outpost  station  and  I  went  to 
the  Red  Cross  headquarters  at  Beauvais,  but  found  that  we 
would  have  to  get  the  things  from  Paris  and  that  that  would 
be  practically  impossible  within  the  time  limit.  However, 
we  decided  to  make  a  try  for  it,  and  so  left  Beauvais  in  a 
small  camion  at  10  :30  o'clock  in  the  evening.  At  a  rail- 
road station  on  the  way  we  had  a  collision  that  did  for  our 
camion  completely.  Fortunately  there  were  no  serious  in- 
juries. We  left  the  disabled  car  by  the  roadside  about 


THE  RED  CROSS  ON  THE  FIELD  OF  HONOR      161 

halfway  to  Paris  and  begged  a  ride  on  a  French  truck  that 
happened  along.  We  reached  Paris  at  4 :30  Sunday  morn- 
ing. Red  Cross  officers  had  to  be  aroused  and  tradesmen 
routed  out  —  no  easy  task  on  a  Sunday  morning  —  but 
we  had  to  have  the  supplies,  and  so  did  it.  By  9  :30  we 
had  a  new  camion,  already  loaded  with  cigars  and  cig- 
arettes from  the  Red  Cross  warehouse,  and  lemons  and 
tartaric-acid  tablets  from  the  shops  of  Paris. 

"  About  a  quarter  of  the  way  back  we  had  trouble  with 
the  new  camion  and  had  to  call  for  help  again.  This  un- 
pleasant and  delaying  experience  was  twice  repeated;  so 
that,  in  fact,  the  entire  load  was  thrice  transferred  before 
it  was  finally  delivered.  But  —  please  notice  this  —  the 
entire  camion  load  of  supplies  was  delivered  at  Chrepoix 
-  two  hours  later  than  the  allotted  time,  to  be  sure,  but 
still  in  plenty  of  time  to  serve  the  purpose.  Several  days 
later  I  found  two  boys  in  one  of  the  hospitals  who  told  me 
of  their  experiences  in  the  Cantigny  attack.  They  spoke 
of  the  lemonade  and  said  that  they  had  never  before  known 
that  lemons  and  tartaric  acid  could  taste  so  good  to  a 
thirsty  man.  ...  I  think  that  our  trip  was  worth  while." 

In  July  of  that  same  year,  1918,  while  serving  hot 
drinks,  cigarettes,  and  sandwiches  to  the  American 
wounded  in  the  field  hospital  at  Montfontain,  Captain  Karr 
was  severely  wounded  in  the  hip  by  the  explosion  of  an 
aerial  bomb. 

In  the  space  of  a  single  chapter  —  even  of  enlarged 
length  such  as  this  —  it  would  be  quite  impossible  to  trace 
serially  or  chronologically  the  development  of  the  vast  field 
service  of  our  Red  Cross.  In  fact  I  doubt  whether  that 
could  be  done  well  within  the  confines  of  a  book  of  any 
ordinary  length.  So  I  have  contented  myself  with  showing 
you  the  beginnings  of  this  work,  back  there  in  the  districts 
of  the  Somme  and  the  Oise  at  the  beginning  of  the  great 
German  drive  and  have  let  the  men  who  knew  of  that  serv- 
ice the  best  —  the  men  who,  themselves,  participated  in  it 


162  WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

—  tell  you  of  it,  largely  in  their  very  own  words.  And 
so  shall  close  the  long  chapter  with  the  war-time  story  of  a 
man  who,  like  Kimball  of  Boston,  is  fairly  typical  of  our 
Red  Cross  workers  in  the  field. 

The  name  of  this  valedictorian  is  Robert  B.  Kellogg,  and 
he  arrived  in  France  —  at  Bordeaux,  like  so  many  of  his 
fellow  workers  —  on  the  sixteenth  day  of  July,  1918,  re- 
porting at  Paris  upon  the  following  evening.  He  came  at 
a  critical  moment.  The  name  of  Chateau-Thierry  was 
again  being  flashed  by  cable  all  around  the  world ;  only  this 
time  and  for  the  first  time  there  was  coupled  with  it  the 
almost  synonymous  phrases  of  "  American  Army "  and 
"  victorious  army."  Kellogg  —  he  soon  after  attained  the 
Red  Cross  rank  of  captain  —  was  told  of  the  great  need  of 
additional  help  in  handling  the  wounded  which  already 
were  coming  into  Paris  in  increasing  numbers  from  both 
Chateau-Thierry  and  Veaux,  and  asked  if  he  could  get  to 
work  at  once.  There  was  but  one  answer  to  such  a  request. 
That  very  night  he  went  on  duty  at  Dr.  Blake's  hospital, 
out  in  the  suburban  district  of  Neuilly,  which  had  been 
taken  over  by  the  American  Red  Cross  some  months  before, 
but  which  now  was  being  used  as  an  emergency  evacuation 
hospital.  For  be  it  remembered  that  those  very  July  days 
were  the  crux  of  the  German  drive.  In  those  bitter  hours 
it  was  not  known  whether  Paris,  itself,  would  be  spared. 
The  men  and  women  in  the  French  capital  hoped  for  the 
best,  but  always  feared  and  anticipated  the  worst. 

For  four  fearful  nights  Captain  Kellogg  worked  there 
in  the  Neuilly  hospital,  carrying  stretchers,  undressing  the 
wounded,  taking  their  histories,  and  at  times  even  aiding 
in  dressing  their  wounds.  It  was  a  job  without  much 
poetry  to  it.  In  fact  it  held  many  intensely  disagreeable 
phases.  But  it  was,  at  that,  a  fairly  typical  Red  Cross 
job,  filled  with  perplexities  and  anxieties  and  long,  long 
hours  of  hard  and  peculiarly  distasteful  labor.  Yet  of 
such  tasks  is  the  real  spirit  of  Red  Cross  service  born. 

Four  to  the  ambulance  came  the  wounded   into  that 


THE  EED  CROSS  ON  THE  FIELD  OF  HONOR      163 

haven  of  Neuilly.  Many  of  them  were  terribly  wounded 
indeed;  and  practically  none  of  them  had  had  more  at- 
tention than  hurriedly  applied  first-aid  dressing.  But  the 
appalling  factor  was  not  alone  the  seriousness  of  the 
wounds,  but  the  mere  numbers  of  the  wounded.  They 
came  in  such  numbers  that  at  times  during  those  four 
eventful  July  evenings  the  floors  of  all  the  rooms  of  the 
hospital  —  even  the  hallways  and  the  garage  —  literally 
were  covered  with  stretchers.  No  wonder  that  the  regular 
personnel  of  the  place,  even  though  steadily  increased  for 
some  months  past,  was  unable  to  cope  with  the  crisis. 
Without  the  help  of  Kellogg  and  eight  or  nine  other  emer- 
gency helpers  from  other  ranks  of  the  American  Red  Cross 
it  is  quite  possible  that  it  would  have  collapsed  entirely. 

Captain  Kellogg' s  emergency  task  at  ^sTeuilly  ended  early 
in  the  morning  of  the  twenty-second ;  but  there  was  no  rest 
or  respite  in  sight  for  him.  That  very  day  a  Red  Cross 
captain  stopped  him  at  headquarters  and  asked  him  if  he 
was  free. 

"  I  guess  so,"  grinned  Kellogg. 

"  Then  come  out  to  Crepy  and  help  us  out,"  said  the 
other  American  Red  Cross  man.  "  We're  in  a  good  deal  of 
a  mess  there." 

"  All  right,"  was  the  reply.     "  I'm  ready  whenever  you 


are." 


He  grinned  again.  He  realized  his  own  predicament. 
He  had  not  yet  been  assigned  to  any  definite  department ; 
in  fact,  although  he  had  given  up  his  precious  American 
passport,  he  had  not  yet  received  the  equally  precious  "  Red 
Cross  Worker's  Card,"  which  was  issued  to  all  the  war 
workers  in  France  and  which  was  of  infinite  value  to  them 
in  getting  about  that  sentry-infested  land.  He  had  no  more 
identification  papers  than  a  rabbit  and  realized  that  he 
might  easily  find  himself  in  a  deal  of  trouble.  Yet  within 
the  half  hour  he  had  packed  his  small  musette  and  grabbing 
up  two  blankets  was  on  his  way  in  an  automobile  toward  the 


164     WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

front.  He  reached  Crepy  at  about  six  o'clock  that  evening 
and  reported  to  Major  Brown,  of  the  Red  Cross. 

"  He  was  called  major,"  says  Kellogg,  as  he  describes  the 
incident,  "  but  he  wore  nothing  to  indicate  his  rank  and  I 
never  did  find  out  just  what  he  was.  He  left  for  Paris 
the  following  day  to  get  supplies,  but  he  never  returned, 
nor  did  I  hear  from  him  again.  There  was  nothing  for  us 
to  do  that  night  and  absolutely  no  provision  for  us.  We 
obtained  coffee  from  a  French  Army  kitchen  and  slept  in  a 
wheat  field  in  the  rain,  with  our  sole  shelter  a  bit  of  canvas 
tied  to  the  rear  of  our  car." 

There  may  be  folk  who  imagine  that  war  is  all  organ- 
ization —  certain  historians  seemingly  have  done  their  best 
to  create  such  an  illusion.  But  the  men  who  have  been 
upon  the  trench  lines  »and  in  the  fields  of  open  battle  know 
better.  They  know  that  even  well-organized  armies,  to  say 
nothing  of  the  Eed  Cross  and  other  equally  well-organized 
and  disciplined  auxiliaries,  cannot  function  at  the  fullness 
of  their  mechanical  processes  in  the  super-emergency  of 
battle.  There  it  is  that  individual  effort  regains  its  ancient 
prestige  and  men  are  men,  rather  than  the  mere  human 
units  of  a  colossal  organization.  Yet  brilliant  as  indi- 
vidual effort  becomes,  all  organization  is  rarely  lost.  And 
so  Kellogg,  in  the  deadening  rain  of  that  July  night,  found 
the  situation  at  Crepy  about  as  follows:  Two  American 
evacuation  hospitals  —  Numbers  Five  and  Thirteen  — 
and  a  French  one,  located  in  the  thick  woods  some  four 
miles  distant  from  the  town,  which  in  turn  was  used  as  an 
evacuating  point  for  all  of  them  —  this  meant  that  the 
patients  were  brought  in  ambulances  from  these  outlying 
hospitals  to  Crepy  and  there  placed  on  hospital  trains, 
bound  for  Paris  and  other  base-hospital  centers.  The 
theory  of  such  operation  is  both  obvious  and  good.  But  in 
the  super-emergency  of  the  third  week  of  July,  1918,  theory 
broke  down  under  practice.  The  evacuation  hospitals  in 
the  woods  received  newly  wounded  men  in  such  numbers 
that  they  were  obliged  to  clear  those  who  had  received  their 


THE  RED  CROSS  ON  THE  FIELD  OF  HONOR      165 

first  aid  dressings  with  an  unprecedented  rapidity.  And 
this  rapidity  was  quite  too  fast  for  the  limited  facilities  of 
the  hospital  trains ;  which  meant  congestion  and  much  trou- 
ble at  the  Crepy  railhead  —  which  was  the  precise  place 
where  Captain  Kellogg  of  our  American  Red  Cross  found 
himself  early  in  the  morning  of  the  twenty-third  day  of 
July. 

"  There  was  I,"  continues  Kellogg,  as  he  relates  the  nar- 
rative of  his  personal  experiences,  "  with  Brown  gone  to 
Paris  and  no  instructions  whatsoever  left  for  me.  But  I 
didn't  need  any  instructions  —  not  after  that  first  bunch 
of  wounded  fellows  came  up  there  to  the  railhead  —  at  just 
a  little  before  noon.  There  were  perhaps  three  hundred 
of  them,  and  while  they  were  waiting  for  the  hospital  trains 
they  lay  there  in  the  open  —  and  it  was  raining  —  their 
stretchers  in  long  rows,  resting  on  the  cinders  alongside 
the  railroad  tracks.  I  had  secured  a  supply  of  cigarettes, 
sweet  chocolate,  cookies,  and  bouillon  tubes  from  a  stock 
left  by  Brown.  I  made  a  soup  for  the  men  and,  with  the 
help  of  some  of  the  litter  bearers,  distributed  it  and  did 
what  else  I  could  for  their  comfort.  When  the  train  came 
in  and  it  was  time  to  move  the  wounded  upon  it,  we  found 
that  we  did  not  have  nearly  enough  stretcher  bearers.  So 
I  went  into  the  town  and  recruited  a  number  of  volunteers 
among  the  soldiers  —  including  several  officers.  That 
night  I  left  my  supplies  in  the  office  of  the  French  Railway 
Transport  officer  in  the  station  and,  with  a  stretcher  for  a 
bed,  found  a  place  to  sleep  in  what  had  been  left  of  a 
bombed  house." 

Let  Captain  Kellogg  continue  to  tell  his  own  story.  He 
is  doing  pretty  well  with  it : 

"  The  next  day,  Field  Hospital  No.  120  arrived  and 
set  up  part  of  its  tents  —  sufficient  to  give  protection  for 
all  patients  thereafter  who  had  to  wait  for  the  trains. 
Medical  and  orderly  attention  was  amply  provided  after 
that,  but  the  food  supply,  even  for  the  officers  and  personnel 
of  the  hospital  company,  was  very  limited  and  the  soup 


166  WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

that  I  was  able  to  make  from  the  bouillon  cubes  proved  a 
blessing. 

"  For  several  days  the  wounded  passed  through  this  point 
at  the  rate  of  several  hundred  a  day,  and  every  man  re- 
ceived what  he  wanted  from  the  Eed  Cross  stock  available. 
Hospital  trains  from  other  points  sometimes  stopped  at 
Crepy.  When  this  happened  I  always  boarded  them  and, 
with  the  help  of  two  enlisted  men,  distributed  cigarettes 
and  cookies.  On  about  my  fifth  day  there  the  number  of 
wounded  being  evacuated  through  that  railhead  and  the 
officers  and  personnel  of  its  field  hospital  company  were 
ordered  to  one  of  the  neighboring  evacuation  hospitals. 
Because  of  the  greatly  reduced  number  of  workers,  our 
tasks  were  therefore  rendered  much  harder,  even  though 
the  number  of  wounded  had  been  somewhat  decreased. 
Our  own  comfort  was  not  particularly  increased.  We 
moved  into  a  small  tent  which  was  fairly  habitable,  al- 
though it  was  both  cold  and  rainy  nearly  every  day.  I  re- 
member one  night  when  it  rained  with  such  violence  that 
the  tent  floor  became  flooded.  I  awoke  to  find  the  stretcher 
on  which  I  was  sleeping  an  island  and  myself  lying  in  a 
pool  of  water.  On  two  occasions  we  were  bombed  at 
night." 

All  these  days  Kellogg  was  trying  to  get  Eed  Cross  head- 
quarters at  Paris  on  the  long-distance  telephone.  But  all 
France  was  particularly  demoralized  those  last  days  of 
July ;  and  the  telephone  service,  never  too  good  under  any 
circumstances,  was  gloriously  bad.  So  after  several  at- 
tempts to  talk  with  headquarters  and  get  some  sort  of  in- 
structions and  help,  he  decided  that  he  would  have  to  go 
there;  which  was  easier  said  than  done.  For  remember 
that  this  Red  Cross  man  had  no  credentials;  in  fact,  no 
identification  papers  of  any  sort  whatsoever.  While  travel 
in  France  in  those  days,  and  for  many,  many  days  and 
months  thereafter,  was  rendered  particularly  difficult  and 
almost  impossible  by  strict  regulations  which  compelled  not 
only  the  constant  display  of  identification  papers  but  a 


THE  RED  CROSS  ON  THE  FIELD  OF  HONOR      167 

separate  and  definite  military  travel  order  for  each  trip 
upon  a  railroad  train.  Which  in  turn  meant  that  it  would 
be  fairly  suicidal  for  Kellogg  to  attempt  to  go  into  Paris 
by  the  only  logical  way  open  to  him  —  by  train.  It  was 
more  than  doubtful  if  he  would  have  been  able  to  even 
board  one  of  them.  For  at  every  railroad  station  in 
France  stood  blue-coated  and  unreasoning  poilus  whose 
definite  authority  was  backed  by  the  constant  display  of  a 
grim  looking  rifle  in  perfect  working  condition. 

So  .Kellogg  walked  to  Paris,  not  every  step  of  the  way, 
for  there  were  times  when  friendly  drivers  of  camions  gave 
him  the  bumping  pleasure  of  a  short  lift.  But  even  these 
were  not  frequent.  Travel  from  Crepy  to  Paris  at  that 
particular  time  happened  to  be  light.  Still,  after  a  night 
at  Senlis,  in  which  he  slept  stretched  across  a  table  in  a 
cafe,  he  did  manage  to  clamber  aboard  a  truck  filled  with 
French  soldiers  and  bound  straight  for  their  capital. 

One  might  reasonably  have  expected  an  ordinary  sort 
of  man  to  have  been  discouraged  by  such  an  experience, 
but  a  good  many  of  our  Red  Cross  men  over  there  were 
quite  far  removed  from  being  ordinary  men.  And  so 
Kellogg,  after  a  few  days  of  routine  office  work  at  head- 
quarters, insisted  upon  his  being  given  an  outpost  job  once 
again.  And  soon  after  was  dispatched  to  the  little  town 
of  La  Ferte  upon  the  Marne,  not  many  miles  distant  from 
Chateau-Thierry.  This  time  he  had  his  working  papers; 
to  say  nothing  of  the  neat  document  which  told  "  all  men 
by  these  presents  "  that  he  was  a  regular  second  lieutenant 
of  the  American  Red  Cross.  His  upward  progress  had 
begun. 

He  waited  several  days  at  the  American  Red  Cross  ware- 
house at  La  Ferte,  during  which  time  he  had  the  oppor- 
tunity of  studying  boche  aerial  bombardments  —  at  ex- 
tremely short  range.  Then  he  was  forwarded  to  the  outpost 
at  Cohan,  conducted  by  Lieutenants  Powell  and  Leighton 
as  partners.  I  may  be  pardoned  if  I  interrupt  Kellogg' s 


168  WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

narrative  long  enough  to  insert  a  sentence  or  two  about 
Powell.  In  some  ways  he  was  the  most  remarkable  of  Red 
Cross  men.  Handicapped  by  a  deformity,  he  stood  less 
than  four  feet  and  a  half  high,  yet  he  was  absolutely  without 
fear.  Hard  test  showed  that.  The  officers  and  men  of  the 
Twenty-eighth  Division  with  whom  he  had  stood  during  the 
acid-test  days  on  the  drive  at  Chateau-Thierry  called  him, 
pertinently  and  affectionately,  "  General  Suicide." 

Cohan  stood  about  five  miles  back  from  the  front-line 
trenches  and  so  was  under  frequent  artillery  fire.  The 
Red  Cross  outpost  there  was  in  a  partly  demolished  struc- 
ture, one  of  the  rooms  of  which  had  been  used  as  a  stall 
and  contained  the  body  of  a  dead  horse  which  could  not  be 
gotten  out  through  the  door.  It  served  that  same  Twenty- 
eighth  Division  with  whom  Powell  made  so  enviable  a 
reputation. 

The  confusion  that  had  prevailed  at  Crepy  was,  happily, 
missing  at  Cohan.  Powell  and  Leighton  not  only  had  an 
excellent  stock  of  Red  Cross  supplies,  which  were  replen- 
ished twice  a  week  from  the  La  Ferte  warehouse,  and  a 
camionette  in  good  order,  but  they  had  a  systematic  and 
orderly  method  of  distribution.  As  Kellogg  worked  with 
them  he  studied  their  methods  —  it  was  a  schooling  of  the 
very  best  sort  for  him.  And  he,  seemingly,  was  an  apt 
scholar.  On  the  twenty-first  of  August  a  Red  Cross  man 
named  Fuller,  with  supplies  bound  for  the  neighboring  out- 
posts of  Dravigny  and  Chery,  stopped  at  Cohan  and  asked 
Kellogg  to  ride  on  with  him.  The  course  of  study  of  "  the 
game  "  was  about  completed.  Kellogg  had  been  in  actual 
Red  Cross  service  for  a  full  month  —  which  in  those  days 
made  him  a  regular  veteran.  Fuller  held  a  note  from  his 
commanding  officer  which  stated  that  if  a  driver  could  be 
assured  the  camionette  upon  which  he  rode  would  be  as- 
signed to  Chery  and  Dravigny. 

Thus  was  Red  Cross  Kellogg's  next  job  set  out  for  him. 
He  had  never  driven  a  Ford.  But  other  folks  have  mas- 
tered such  a  handicap  and  Kellogg  had  driven  many  real 


THE  RED  CROSS  ON  THE  FIELD  OF  HONOR      169 

automobiles,  and  so  went  easily  to  the  new  job,  with  such 
rapidity  and  skill  that  before  the  next  night  he  was  in 
sole  charge  of  the  little  camionette  and  driving  it  with  pro- 
fessional speed  over  the  steel-torn  battlefields  and  roads  of 
the  entire  Chateau-Thierry  district. 

Dravigny  and  Chery  shocked  and  fascinated  him.  At 
the  first  of  these  two  towns  our  Red  Cross  men  in  charge 
were  quite  comfortably  situated.  They  occupied  a  house 
in  very  fair  preservation  which  was  situated  in  a  lovely 
garden  and  had  large  and  bright  rooms  for  living  and  for 
working.  But  Kellogg  remembers  Chery  Chartreuve  as  a 
"  hell  hole." 

"  I  can  think  of  no  better  words  with  which  to  describe 
it,"  he  says.  "  Not  a  building  with  all  four  walls  and  a 
roof  remained  in  all  the  town.  The  debris  of  fallen  walls 
and  discarded  military  equipment  clogged  the  streets. 
Refuse  and  filth  were  everywhere.  The  sanitary  arrange- 
ments —  well,  there  hadn't  been  any.  The  odor  of  dead 
horses  filled  the  air.  Plies  ?  There  are  no  words  to  de- 
scribe the  awfulness  of  the  flies.  Our  own  artillery  — 
,75's  and  .155's  —  surrounded  the  town  in  addition  to  oc- 
cupying positions  at  each  end  of  it  and  in  its  center.  The 
roar  of  these  gims  was  continuous,  the  concussion  tremen- 
dously nerve-racking,  while  the  presence  of  this  artillery 
made  the  village  a  target  for  the  enemy  guns.  It  was 
shelled  day  and  night.  And  during  the  nights  the  boche 
seemed  to  take  an  especial  delight  in  filling  the  town  with 
gas. 

"  Sleep  was  almost  impossible.  We  had  in  one  night 
five  gas  alarms,  in  each  case  the  concentration  being  suffi- 
ciently strong  to  necessitate  the  gas  masks.  The  dressing 
station  was  next  to  our  sleeping  quarters.  It  was  covered 
with  gassed  and  exhausted  doughboys  who  had  crept  in 
there  in  search  of  shelter.  At  frequent  intervals  the  am- 
bulances would  arrive  with  fresh  loads  of  wounded.  The 
whistle  and  explosion  of  shells  was  constant.  A  battery  of 
,155's  in  our  back  yard  nearly  lifted  us  from  our  cots  each 


170     WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

time  it  was  fired.  Once  I  got  a  dose  of  gas  sufficient  to 
cause  the  almost  complete  loss  of  my  voice  and  a  throat 
trouble  that  lasted  for  weeks." 

Yet  under  conditions  such  as  these,  if  not  even  worse, 
Kellogg  and  his  fellows  worked  —  all  day  and  usually  until 
ten  or  eleven  o'clock  at  night.  Their  supplies  went  to  the 
boys  in  the  lines.  This  was  not  only  ordinarily  true,  but 
at  Chery,  particularly  so.  The  Seventy-seventh  Division 
had  moved  in  close  to  the  town,  and  on  the  twenty-ninth  of 
August,  while  the  Red  Cross  workers  were  pausing  for  a 
few  minutes  to  catch  up  a  snack  of  lunch,  a  shell  landed 
plumb  in  front  of  their  outpost  building.  Its  fragments 
entered  the  doors  and  windows  and  perforated  several  of 
their  food  containers.  Sugar,  coffee,  cocoa  —  all  spilled 
upon  the  floor. 

The  room  was  filled  with  men  —  soldiers  as  well  as  Red 
Cross  —  at  the  moment.  None  was  hurt.  With  little 
interval  a  second  shell  came.  This  time  two  men  who  had 
taken  refuge  in  a  shed  that  formed  a  portion  of  the  building 
were  killed.  There  was  seemingly  better  shelter  across  the 
street.  To  it  the  doughboys  began  running.  Before  they 
were  well  across  the  narrow  way,  the  third  boclie  visitor 
descended.  It  was  a  deadly  thing  indeed.  Thirty-eight 
American  lives  were  its  toll.  Eleven  lay  dead  where  they 
dropped.  The  others  died  before  they  could  reach  the 
hospital,  while  the  escape  of  the  Red  Cross  men  was  little 
short  of  providential. 

The  station  had  to  be  abandoned  at  once.  The  Red 
Cross  moved  back  to  Dravigny  in  good  order,  and  what 
was  left  of  miserable  Chery  Chartreuve  was  speedily  oblit- 
erated by  the  Germans. 

The  record  of  Captain  Kellogg's  experiences  with  our 
Red  Cross  in  France  reads  like  a  modern  Pilgrim's 
Progress.  Our  Christian  who  found  himself  in  khaki  was 
quickly  moved  across  the  great  checkerboard  of  war.  On 
one  day  he  was  reestablishing  the  Chery  outpost  at  the 


THE  RED  CROSS  ON  THE  FIELD  OF  HONOR      171 

little  town  of  Mareieul,  from  which  point  the  Seventy- 
seventh  could  still  be  served,  but  with  far  less  danger ;  on 
the  next  he  was  far  away  from  the  Seventy-seventh  and  at 
the  little  French  town  of  Breny,  at  the  service,  if  you 
please,  of  the  Thirty-second  Division,  United  States  Army. 
The  Seventy-seventh  had  been  chiefly  composed  of  New 
York  State  boys;  they  wore  the  Statue  of  Liberty  as  an 
army  insignia  upon  their  uniforms.  The  Thirty-second 
came  from  the  Middle  West  —  from  Wisconsin  and  Mich- 
igan chiefly.  It  had  been  in  the  lines  northwest  of  Soissons 
-the  only  American  Division  in  the  sector  —  and  there 
had  cooperated  most  efficiently  with  the  French.  Its  regi- 
ments were  being  used  there  as  shock  troops  to  capture  the 
town  of  Juvigny  and  territory  beyond  which  seemingly  the 
tired  French  Army  was  quite  unable  to  take.  They  were 
accomplishing  their  huge  task  with  typical  American  bril- 
liancy, but  also  in  the  American  war  fashion  of  a  heavy 
loss  of  precious  life.  Because  of  the  isolation  of  the 
Thirty-second  from  the  usual  American  bases  of  supply  it 
became  peculiarly  dependent  upon  our  Red  Cross  for  its 
tobacco  and  other  creature  comforts,  responsibility  which 
our  Red  Cross  regarded  as  real  opportunity.  In  addition 
to  the  ordinary  comforts  it  ordered  some  four  thousand 
newspapers  each  day  from  Paris,  which  were  enthusiasti- 
cally received  by  the  doughboys.  And  you  may  be  assured 
that  these  were  not  French  newspapers.  They  were  those 
typically  Parisian  sheets  in  the  English  language,  the  New 
York  Herald,  the  Chicago  Tribune,  and  the  London  Mail. 
Thereafter  and  until  long  weeks  after  the  signing  of  the 
armistice  Kellogg  remained  with  the  Thirty-second,  but  did 
not  cease  his  Pilgrim's  Progress.  For  the  Division  moved ; 
here  and  there  and  everywhere.  For  several  weeks  it  was 
at  Vic-sur-Aisne,  while  Red  Cross  Kellogg  —  who  by  this 
time  was  a  real  Ford  expert  —  was  making  hot  chocolate 
in  a  huge  cave  that  once  had  been  an  American  division 
headquarters.  Then  it  moved  to  a  new  sector,  not  far  from 
Bar-le-Duc,  and  Kellogg  moved  with  it.  In  the  meantime 


172  WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

he  had  performed  temporary  work  at  ISTeufchateau  —  al- 
ways an  important  division  headquarters  of  the  A -men' can 
Eed  Cross  —  at  Bar-le-Duc  and  at  Eosnes;  but  these  jobs 
were  merely  stop-gaps  —  the  real  task  was  forever  at  the 
front  lines.  And  when,  on  the  twenty-fourth  of  September, 
Kellogg  came  up  with  his  Division  at  Wally,  he  was  ready 
for  hard  fighting  once  again.  So  was  the  Thirty-second. 
It  was  moving  forward  a  little  each  day  and  in  fact  was 
already  considered  "  in  reserve  "  on  September  26  —  the 
day  of  the  beginning  of  the  great  Argonne  offensive.  Two 
days  later,  with  a  borrowed  army  truck  and  an  American 
Red  Cross  camionette  —  both  filled  with  supplies  to  their 
limit  —  Kellogg  and  two  of  his  Red  Cross  associates  moved 
forward  nine  miles  to  the  Avecourt  Wood  and  there  joined 
the  Sixty-fourth  Brigade  of  the  Division.  The  brigade 
commander  furnished  them  with  an  old  dugout  —  which 
for  nearly  four  years  past  had  formed  a  part  of  the  French 
trench  system.  After  their  supplies  had  been  dumped  into 
the  place  there  was  just  room  left  for  the  bedding  rolls  of 
the  Red  Cross  men,  and  even  these  overlapped  one  another. 
It  rained  steadily  for  several  days  and  the  mud  upon  the 
floor  of  the  dugout  became  entirely  liquefied.  At  night 
water  came  in  through  the  doorway  and  trickled  in  innum- 
erable sprays  down  from  the  roof.  The  men  lived  in  mud 
knee-deep.  Oh,  it  was  some  fun  being  a  Red  Cross  man  at 
the  front  in  those  days  of  actual  fighting!  But  the  fun 
was  some  distance  removed  from  those  popular  reports  of 
"  the  Battle  of  Paris  "  which  used  to  come  trickling  back 
to  America  for  the  edification  and  joy  of  the  folk  who 
stayed  behind.  It  was  prunes  and  preserves  being  a  Red 
Cross  worker  in  France  in  those  autumn  days  of  1918. 
Only  the  trouble  was  that  no  one  ever  could  find  the  prunes 
or  the  preserves. 

On  the  thirtieth  day  of  September,  the  Thirty-second 
moved  from  the  Avecourt  Woods  to  those  of  Montfaucon 
and  assumed  a  military  position  of  "  support." 

"  The  intervening  country  had  been  No  Man's  Land  for 


THE  RED  CROSS  ON  THE  FIELD  OF  HONOR      173 

four  years  and  the  condition  of  the  roads  can  only  be 
imagined,'7  says  Captain  Kellogg.  "  We  followed  the 
troops,  who  left  at  about  eleven  o'clock  that  morning,  but 
were  soon  caught  in  that  tremendous  congestion  that  existed 
on  all  the  roads  during  the  first  days  of  the  drive.  By 
dark  we  were  still  on  the  road,  having  progressed  less  than 
'two  miles.  We  finally  became  hopelessly  stuck,  being 
stalled,  and  were  obliged  to  remain  stuck  throughout  the 
night.  During  the  day  we  had  given  out  many  packages 
of  cookies  to  the  tired  and  hungry  men  along  the  road. 
Many  times  since  the  soldiers  have  spoken  to  me  in  appre- 
ciation of  those  cookies.  That  night  was  one  of  the  most 
uncomfortable  experiences  that  I  had  in  France.  It  was 
so  cold  that  we  could  not  keep  warm.  This,  coupled  with 
the  occasional  whine  of  incoming  shells,  prevented  sleep, 
although  frequently  we  threw  down  our  bedding  rolls  at  the 
side  of  the  road  and  attempted  it. 

"  In  the  morning  we  found  a  number  of  ambulances 
among  the  other  stalled  vehicles.  For  more  than  forty- 
eight  hours  they  had  been  on  the  road  with  their  wounded 
and  neither  drivers  nor  patients  had  been  able  to  obtain 
much  of  anything  to  eat  or  drink.  We  supplied  them  with 
cookies  and  gave  them  what  water  we  had  in  our  canteens. 
Two  of  the  wounded  had  died  during  the  night.  Two 
others  were  unconscious  and  another  was  delirious.  The 
congestion  ahead  of  us  on  the  road  that  morning  seemed  as 
bad  as  ever.  Finally  we  managed  to  get  out  of  that  road 
entirely,  making  a  fresh  start  by  a  longer  but  less  crowded 
way.  At  dusk  that  first  day  of  October  found  us  still  quite 
a  distance  from  our  Division.  We  spent  that  night  with 
some  Signal  Corps  men  in  the  cellar  of  a  shell-shocked 
building  in  Varennes.  The  following  morning  we  suc- 
ceeded in  reaching  our  destination  and  located  ourselves 
with  several  enlisted  men  of  the  Forty-third  Balloon  Com- 
pany in  a  dugout  which  until  a  few  days  before  had  been 
occupied  by  German  officers. 

"  This  place  was  interesting.     Reached  by  a  steep  flight 


174     WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

of  steps,  it  was  sunk  fully  fifty  feet  below  the  surface.  It 
consisted  of  three  rooms  and  a  kitchen,  the  walls  of  each 
nicely  boarded  and  the  whole  comfortably,  if  roughly, 
finished. 

"  The  combat  regiments  and  battalions  of  our  army  were 
all  around  us  in  the  woods.  We  continued  serving  them. 
On  the  morning  of  the  third  I  drove  back  to  Froidos  for 
fresh  supplies.  Upon  my  return  I  found  that  the  troops 
of  our  Sixty-fourth  Brigade  were  already  on  the  road,  mov- 
ing toward  the  town  of  Very.  We  knew  what  this  meant 
—  that  in  the  morning  they  were  going  into  the  front  lines 
and  probably  over  the  top.  We  quickly  unloaded  cookies 
and  cigarettes  from  the  car  and,  standing  by  the  roadside 
in  the  dark,  handed  a  supply  of  each  to  every  soldier  who 
passed  by. 

"  The  troops  went  into  the  lines  at  Epinonville  before 
daybreak  on  the  morning  of  the  fourth  of  October.  Lieu- 
tenant McGinnis  of  the  Red  Cross  and  I  arrived  there 
about  noon.  Never  shall  I  forget  it.  The  battle  lines  lay 
just  a  little  way  ahead  of  us.  Machine  guns  still  occupied 
the  town  which  then  was  under  violent  bombardment.  In 
fact  during  the  entire  three  weeks  that  we  made  our  head- 
quarters at  Epinonville  there  was  not  a  single  day  or  night 
that  the  town  was  not  subjected  to  shell  fire. 

"  Our  boys  had  made  a  first  attack  early  in  the  morning 
of  the  fourth.  All  that  morning  the  wounded  had  been 
returning  —  in  large  numbers.  Some  of  them  were 
brought  to  regimental  dressing  stations  of  the  128th  In- 
fantry, but  the  majority  were  handled  at  that  of  the  127th. 
It  was  here  that  we  did  most  of  our  work  during  the  next 
few  days.  The  station  was  in  a  sort  of  dugout,  made  of 
boards  and  builded  into  a  sidehill.  In  the  ditch  beside  it 
a  sizable  salvage  pile  had  materialized  already,  clothing  and 
bandages  —  both  blood-soaked,  rifles,  shoes,  helmets,  mess 
kits,  here  and  there  a  hand  or  a  foot.  On  the  ground, 
lying  on  stretchers,  were  a  number  of  wounded  men  waiting 
for  the  ambulances  that  would  take  them  to  the  field  hos- 


THE  RED  CROSS  ON  THE  FIELD  OF  HONOR      175 

pitals.  All  about  were  soldiers ;  slightly  wounded,  gassed, 
shell-shocked,  or  just  plain  sick  or  exhausted.  Down  the 
road  could  be  seen  a  bunch  of  prisoners  just  captured  that 
morning.  On  its  opposite  side  lay  the  bodies  of  several  of 
our  fellows  who  had  just  died,  while  across  the  fields  beyond 
stretched  slow-moving,  irregular  processions  of  litter  bear- 
ers, bringing  in  their  burdens  of  wounded  men. 

"  Such  were  the  scenes  and  conditions  that  greeted  us  in 
Epinonville.  There  was  work  a-plenty  awaiting  us,  and 
we  lost  no  time  in  taking  possession  of  a  shack  for  our  out- 
post of  the  American  Red  Cross.  We  quickly  unpacked 
our  supplies  and  moved  into  it.  McGinnis  had  a  rather 
formidable  job  of  making  some  twenty  gallons  of  cocoa, 
while  I,  equipped  with  cookies,  cigarettes,  and  canteens 
filled  with  water,  did  what  I  could  for  the  wounded  in  and 
around  the  dressing  station. 

"  Late  in  the  afternoon  it  became  necessary  for  me  to 
return  to  our  dugout  in  the  woods  for  supplies  which  we 
had  been  unable  to  bring  in  on  the  first  trip.  So,  leaving 
McGinnis  to  take  care  of  the  dressing  stations,  I  started 
back,  taking  with  me  a  load  of  wounded  men  for  whom  no 
ambulance  was  available.  Our  route  took  us  over  a  dilap- 
idated plank  road  through  the  narrow  valley  between  Epin- 
onville and  Very.  We  had  covered  perhaps  half  of  this 
road  when  Fritz  began  a  bombardment  of  the  valley  which 
lasted  fully  fifteen  minutes.  A  French  artillery  outfit  was 
moving  ahead  of  us  at  a  snail's  pace  and  we  could  not  pass 
it  because  of  the  narrowness  of  the  road.  Some  of  the 
shells  were  breaking  close  at  hand,  showering  the  car  with 
shrapnel  and  fragments,  but  there  was  no  way  I  could  re- 
move the  wounded  to  a  place  of  safety.  There  was  nothing 
to  do  but  pray  for  luck  and  keep  going  as  fast  as  the  slow- 
moving  artillery  ahead  would  permit.  Several  men  within 
our  sight  were  hit  during  those  fifteen  minutes,  but  fortune 
favored  us.  Not  one  of  our  men  was  even  scratched  and 
I  delivered  my  load  safely  at  the  triage  at  Very. 

"  Arriving  at  Epinonville  late  that  evening  I  worked  at 


1T6  WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

the  dressing  station  most  of  the  night,  serving  hot  cocoa, 
cookies,  and  cigarettes  to  the  wounded  and  the  men  who 
were  working  for  their  comfort.  During  these  first  days 
there  was  hardly  any  food,  and  the  doctors  worked  contin- 
uously day  and  night  with  only  such  sleep  as  they  could 
snatch  for  a  few  minutes  at  a  time. 

"  During  the  sixteen  days  that  the  Division  was  in  the 
front  line  after  we  went  into  Epinonville,  our  first  atten- 
tion was  given  to  the  dressing  stations  and  the  wounded. 
As  fast  as  new  stations  were  opened  at  farther  advanced 
points,  we  reached  them  with  our  cocoa  and  cookies.  The 
ordinarily  simple  task  of  making  cocoa  became,  under  the 
conditions  which  we  faced,  a  huge  job.  We  usually  made 
enough  at  a  time  to  fill  our  four  five-gallon  thermos  con- 
tainers and  almost  always  we  had  to  do  the  work  ourselves. 
Water  was  always  scarce  and  to  get  enough  of  it  was  a 
problem.  Wood  had  to  be  cut  and  fires  made  and  handled 
with  the  utmost  caution  so  that  no  smoke  would  show. 

"  Other  conditions  aside  from  the  danger  that  constantly 
threatened  were  equally  difficult.  The  weather  was  awful 
—  cold  and  rainy,  with  deep  mud  everywhere.  Eating 
was  an  uncertain  and  precarious  proposition.  The  shack 
that  we  called  home  was  —  well,  you  would  hesitate  to  put 
a  dog  in  it  in  normal  times. 

"  Our  most  interesting  work  generally  was  done  under 
the  cover  of  darkness.  For  instance,  there  came  a  night 
when  we  particularly  wanted  to  reach  Company  K  of  our 
128th  Infantry.  One  of  its  cooks  offered  to  go  with  us  as 
guide,  and  so,  with  our  car  loaded  with  hot  cocoa,  cookies, 
cigarettes,  sweet  chocolate,  and  chewing  tobacco,  we  left 
Epinonville  shortly  after  dusk.  A  mile  or  so  out  we 
diverged  from  the  road,  our  route  then  taking  us  across  the 
shell-torn  fields,  with  only  a  faint  footpath  to  follow.  Of 
course  no  light  was  possible  and  a  blacker  night  there  never 
was.  Tommy  —  the  company  cook  —  and  McGinnis 
walked  immediately  in  front  of  the  car  indicating  the 
course  I  should  take.  We  continued  thus  until  we  had 


THE  RED  CROSS  ON  THE  FIELD  OF  HONOR      177 

penetrated  beyond  some  of  our  machine-gun  positions. 
Ahead  of  us  and  back  of  us  and  all  around  us  shells  were 
bursting.  The  sing  of  machine-gun  bullets  was  in  the  air. 
Our  mission  seemed  hopeless,  but  we  knew  that  those  boys 
of  Company  K  had  been  lying  in  the  shell  holes  and  the 
shallow  dugouts  for  two  long  days  with  little  to  eat,  drink, 
or  smoke.  We  determined  to  reach  them.  Star  shells 
were  lighting  the  fields  ahead  of  us,  and  finally  we  dared 
not  proceed  farther  with  the  car  for  fear  it  would  be  seen 
and  draw  fire.  Figuring  that  we  could  get  a  detail  of  boys 
to  come  back  for  the  cans  of  cocoa  and  other  things,  we  left 
the  car  in  the  lee  of  a  hill  and  went  ahead  on  foot,  taking 
with  us  what  we  could  carry  in  our  pockets  and  sacks.  K 
Company  had  shifted  its  position,  however,  and  we  could 
not  locate  it.  We  distributed  the  stuff  we  had  with  us  to 
the  soldiers  we  passed  and  then  returned  to  the  car.  Here 
we  sought  out  the  officers  of  the  outfits  lying  nearest  us  and 
gained  their  permission  to  let  the  men  —  a  few  at  a  time  — 
come  to  the  car,  where  we  served  them  until  our  stock  was 
exhausted.  Most  of  these  men  were  from  the  127th. 
Some  were  from  a  machine-gun  battalion.  These  boys  for 
several  days  had  been  dependent  upon  their  '  iron  rations.' 
Mere  words  cannot  express  their  appreciation  of  our  hot 
cocoa  and  other  things.  I  recall  that  our  chewing  tobacco 
made  a  great  hit  with  them.  They  could  not  smoke  after 
dark  and  welcomed  something  that  would  take  the  place 
of  smoking." 

Enough  of  the  incidental  detail  of  the  Red  Cross  worker. 
I  think  that  you  have  now  gained  a  fair  idea  of  what  his 
job  really  was ;  of  not  alone  the  danger  that  it  held  for  him 
at  all  times,  but  the  manifold  discomforts,  the  exposure, 
the  almost  unending  hours  of  hard,  hard  work.  Multiply 
Red  Cross  Kellogg  by  Eed  Cross  Jones  and  Smith  and 
Brown  and  Robinson  —  to  the  extent  of  several  hundreds 
—  and  you  will  begin  to  have  only  a  faint  impression  of 
the  magnitude  of  concerted  work  done  by  the  men  of  our 
American  Red  Cross  in  the  battlefields  of  France  in  those 


178     WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

fall  and  summer  months  of  1918.  A  good  deal  has  been 
written  about  the  Red  Cross  woman  —  before  you  are  done 
with  this  book  I  shall  have  some  more  things  to  say  about 
them,  myself.  A  word  of  praise  at  least  is  the  due  of  the 
Eed  Cross  man.  They  are  not  the  shirkers  or  the  slackers 
that  some  thoughtless  folk  imagined  them  —  decidedly  not. 
They  were  men  —  generally  well  above,  the  army  age  of 
acceptance,  even  as  volunteers  —  who  found  that  they 
could  not  keep  out  of  the  immortal  fight  for  the  freeing  of 
the  liberty  of  the  world. 

Take  the  case  of  Lieutenant  Kellogg' s  right-hand  man  — 
now  Captain  McGinnis.  He  was  a  Coloradian  and  nearly 
fifty  years  of  age  when  the  United  States  entered  the  World 
War.  He  is  not  a  particularly  robust  man,  and  yet  when 
we  finally  did  slip  into  the  great  conflict,  it  was  this  Eed 
Cross  McGinnis  who  recruited  an  entire  company  of  in- 
fantry for  the  Colorado  National  Guard  and  was  commis- 
sioned a  first  lieutenant  in  it.  When  the  National  Guard 
was  made  a  part  of  the  Federal  Army,  McGinnis  was  dis- 
charged. He  was  too  old,  they  said. 

The  man  was  nearly  broken-hearted ;  but  his  determina- 
tion never  wavered.  He  was  bound  to  get  into  the  big 
fight.  If  the  army  would  not  have  him  there  might  per- 
haps be  some  other  militant  organization  that  would. 
There  was.  It  was  the  Red  Cross  —  our  own  Amer- 
ican Red  Cross  if  you  please.  And  what  McGinnis,  of 
Colorado,  meant  to  our  Red  Cross  you  already  have 
seen. 

Multiply  the  McGinnises  as  well  as  the  Kelloggs  and  you 
begin  once  again  to  get  the  great  spirit  and  power  of  the 
Red  Cross  man.  Danger,  personal  danger?  What  mat- 
tered that  to  these  ?  They  consecrated  soul  and  spirit,  and 
faced  danger  with  a  smile  or  a  jest,  and  forever  with  the 
sublime  optimism  of  a  youth  that  will  not  die,  even  though 
hair  becomes  gray  and  thin  lines  seam  the  countenance. 
And  now  and  then  and  again  they,  too,  made  the  supreme 


THE  RED  CROSS  ON  THE  FIELD  OF  HONOR       179 

sacrifice.  The  American  Eed  Cross  has  its  own  high-set 
honor  roll. 

After  the  signing  of  the  armistice,  Kellogg's  beloved 
Thirty-second  Division  was  one  of  those  chosen  for  the 
advance  into  the  Rhineland  countries.  It  had  fairly 
earned  this  honor.  For  in  those  not-to-be-forgotten  twenty 
days  of  October  that  it  had  held  a  front-line  sector,  it  had 
gained  every  objective  set  for  it.  Therefore  it  was  re- 
lieved from  active  duty  on  the  twentieth  and  sent  back  to 
the  Very  Woods  in  reserve.  But  Kellogg  and  his  fellows 
were  not  placed  "  in  reserve  " — not  at  that  moment,  at  any 
rate. 

They  found  "  their  boys "  tired  and  miserable,  liv- 
ing in  the  mud  in  "  pup  tents/7  and  greatly  in  need  of  Red 
Cross  attention  and  assistance.  Finally,  on  the  twenty- 
eighth  and  under  the  insistence  of  their  commanding  of- 
ficers, Kellogg  and  McGinnis  went  back  to  Bar-le-Duc  for 
five  days  of  rest.  They  needed  it.  There  was  a  Red  Cross 
bathing  outfit  at  Bar-le-Duc,  and  the  two  men  needed  that 
also.  It  had  been  more  than  six  weeks  since  they  had 
even  had  an  opportunity  to  bathe. 

Armistice  Day  found  the  Thirty-second  in  actual  fight- 
ing once  again  and  Kellogg  and  McGinnis  with  it  —  by 
this  time  one  might  almost  say  "  of  course."  It  was 
located  in  and  about  Ecurey  and  kept  up  the  fighting  until 
the  fateful  eleven  o'clock  in  the  morning  set  for  the  cessa- 
tion of  hostilities.  The  Division  remained  at  Ecurey  for 
just  a  week  after  the  signing  of  the  armistice.  Then  it 
began  its  long  hike  toward  the  east,  passing  through  Luxem- 
bourg and  down  to  the  Moselle  at  the  little  village  of  Was- 
serbillig,  where  it  arrived  on  the  twenty-ninth  day  of  No- 
vember. 

Kellogg,  McGinnis,  and  some  other  of  our  Red 
Cross  men  —  to  say  nothing  of  a  big  Red  Cross  truck  — 
kept  with  it.  While  it  had  been  assumed  by  the  Paris 
headquarters  of  the  American  Red  Cross  that  it  would  be 


180     WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

impossible  to  serve  the  boys  on  their  long  march  into  the 
occupied  area  and  so  no  provision  was  made  for  the  for- 
warding of  comfort  supplies,  as  a  matter  of  actual  fact 
there  was  a  good  deal  that  could  be  done  —  and  was 
done. 

In  such  a  situation  was  Red  Cross  opportunity,  time  and 
time  and  time  again.  And  if  Paris  for  a  little  was  neglect- 
ful of  the  fullness  of  all  of  it,  our  R,ed  Cross  men  who 
were  at  the  Rhine  were  not  —  not  for  one  single  moment. 
They  were  on  the  job,  and,  with  the  limited  facilities  at 
hand,  more  than  made  good  with  it.  One  single  final  inci- 
dent will  show : 

On  the  morning  that  the  Thirty-second  swung  down  into 
Wasserbillig  from  the  pleasant,  war-spared  Luxembourg 
country  and  first  entered  Prussian  Germany,  the  Red  Cross 
men  with  it  found  that  two  of  their  fellows  —  Lieutenants 
R.  S.  Gillespie  and  Robert  Wildes  —  were  already 
handling  the  situation.  These  men  had  previously  been 
engaged  in  similar  work  at  Longwy,  and  had  been  sent  for- 
ward with  a  five-ton  truck,  loaded  with  f oodstuffs,  for  such 
returning  prisoners  —  and  there  were  many  of  them  —  as 
the  Thirty-second  might  encounter  on  its  eastward  march. 
Under  Lieutenant  Gillespie' s  direction  a  canteen  already 
was  in  operation  at  the  railroad  station  there  in  Wasser- 
billig. Equipped  with  a  small  supply  of  tin  cups,  plates, 
and  the  like  —  to  say  nothing  of  several  stoves  —  it  was 
serving  soup,  bread,  jam,  beans,  J>acon,  corned  beef,  and 
coffee.  The  prisoners  (soldiers  and  civilians  —  men, 
women,  and  children,  and  many  of  them  in  a  pitiable  con- 
dition) came  through  from  Germany  on  the  trains  up  the 
valley  of  the  Moselle.  They  had  a  long  wait,  generally 
overnight,  in  Wasserbillig.  And  there  the  American  Red 
Cross  fed  them  by  the  hundreds,  and  in  every  possible  way 
ministered  to  their  comfort. 

It  saw  opportunity,  and  reached  to  it.  It  saw  a  chance 
of  service,  and  welcomed  it.  The  record  of  its  welcome  is 


THE  RED  CROSS  ON  THE  FIELD  OF  HONOR       181 

written  in  the  hearts  and  minds  and  memories  of  the  boys 
who  marched  down  the  valley  of  the  Moselle,  through 
Treves  and  Cochem,  to  Coblenz.  From  those  hearts  and 
minds  and  memories  they  cannot  easily  be  erased. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

OUR  BED  CROSS  PERFORMS  ITS  SUPREME  MISSION 

AFTER  all  is  said  and  done,  what  is  the  supreme  pur- 
pose of  the  Red  Cross  ? 

I  think  that  any  one  who  has  made  even  a  cursory  study 
of  the  organization  —  its  ideals  and  history  —  should  have 
but  little  hesitancy  in  finding  an  answer  for  that  question. 
Despite  its  genuine  achievement  in  such  grave  crises  as  the 
San  Francisco  earthquake  and  fire,  for  instance,  its  real 
triumphs  have  almost  always  been  wrought  upon  the  field 
of  war.  And  there  its  original  mission  was  definite  —  the 
succoring  of  the  wounded.  That  mission  was  quite  as 
definite  in  this  Great  War  so  lately  ended  as  in  the  days  of 
Florence  Nightingale  and  Clara  Barton.  The  canteen 
work  of  our  Red  Cross  in  the  past  two  years  for  our  boys 
who  came  and  went  across  France  and  Germany  was  inter- 
esting and  important;  its  field  work,  which  you  have  just 
seen,  even  more  so.  Yet  its  great  touch  —  almost,  I  should 
say,  its  touch  divine  —  came  not  merely  when  the  boys 
traveled  or  when  they  went  upon  the  field  of  battle,  but 
rather  when  the  iron  hand  of  war  cruelly  smote  them  down. 
Then  it  was  that  our  Red  Cross  was  indeed  the  Greatest 
Mother  in  the  World  —  the  symbolic  spirit  of  its  superb 
poster  most  amply  realized,  in  fact. 

The  hospital  work  of  the  American  Red  Cross  in  France, 
particularly  in  its  medical  phases  as  distinct  from  those 
more  purely  of  entertainment,  was,  in  the  several  suc- 
cessive forms  of  organization  of  the  institution  over  there, 
known  as  the  Medical  and  Surgical  Division  or  Depart- 
ment, although  finally  as  the  Bureau  of  Hospital  Adminis- 
tration. In  fact  it  was  almost  the  only  department  of  our 
Red  Cross  in  France  which  did  not,  for  one  reason  or  an- 
other, undergo  reorganization  after  reorganization.  This, 

182 


SUPREME  MISSION  183 

in  turn,  has  accounted  for  much  of  its  efficiency.  It  was 
builded  on  a  plan  which  foresaw  every  emergency  and 
from  which  finally  the  more  permanent  scheme  for  the 
entire  Red  Cross  was  drawn. 

"  We  divided  our  job  into  three  great  steps,"  the  man 
who  headed  it  most  successfully  told  me  one  day  in  Paris. 
"  The  first  was  to  meet  the  emergency  that  arose,  no  matter 
where  it  was  or  what  it  was ;  the  second  was  to  perfect  the 
organization,  and  the  third  and  final  step  was  to  tell  about 
it  —  to  make  our  necessary  reports  and  the  like." 

A  program  which,  rigidly  set  down,  was  rigidly  adhered 
to.  Remember,  if  you  will  once  again,  that  under  the 
original  organization  of  the  American  Red  Cross  in  France 
there  were  two  great  operating  departments  side  by  side; 
one  for  military  affairs,  the  other  for  civil.  In  those  early 
days  the  Department  of  Military  Affairs  grouped  its  work 
chiefly  under  the  Medical  and  Surgical  Division  which  was 
headed  by  Colonel  Alexander  Lambert,  a  distinguished 
New  York  physician  who  then  bore  the  title  of  Chief  Sur- 
geon of  the  American  Red  Cross.  It  was  this  early  divi- 
sion which  planned  the  first  of  the  great  American  Red 
Cross  hospitals  in  France,  of  which  very  much  more  in 
good  time. 

In  January,  1918,  this  Medical  and  Surgical  Division 
became  known  as  the  Medical  and  Surgical  Section  of  the 
Department  of  Military  Affairs,  while  Captain  C.  C.  Bur- 
lingame,  a  young  and  energetic  doctor  who  had  met  with 
much  success  in  the  New  England  manufacturing  village 
of  South  Manchester,  Connecticut,  became  its  guiding 
head.  Of  Captain  Burlingame  —  he  attained  the  United 
States  Army  rank  of  lieutenant  colonel  before  the  conclu- 
sion of  the  war  —  you  also  shall  hear  much  more.  It 
would  be  quite  difficult,  in  fact,  to  keep  him  out  of  the 
pages  of  this  book,  if  such  were  the  desire.  One  of  the 
most  energetic,  the  most  tireless,  the  most  efficient  execu- 
tives of  our  Red  Cross  in  France,  he  accomplished  results 
of  great  brilliancy  through  the  constant  use  of  these  very 


184     WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

attributes.  Within  six  months  after  his  arrival  in  France 
he  had  risen  from  first  lieutenant  to  the  army  rank  of  cap- 
tain, while  his  real  achievements  were  afterward  recog- 
nized in  decorations  hy  the  French  of  their  Medaille 
d'Honneur  and  by  the  new  Polish  Government  of  its 
precious  Eagle. 

In  these  weeks  and  months  of  the  first  half  of  1918, 
Burlingame  found  much  of  his  work  divided  into  several 
of  the  functions  of  the  Department  of  Civil  Affairs  —  par- 
ticularly among  such  sectors  as  the  Children's  Bureau,  the 
Bureau  of  Tuberculosis,  and  the  Bureau  of  Refugees. 
This  was  organization  business.  It  took  strength  from 
that  very  arm  of  the  Ked  Cross  which  soon  was  to  be  called 
upon  to  accomplish  so  very  much  indeed.  And  when,  on 
the  twenty-fourth  of  August,  1918,  the  Gibson  reorgan- 
ization plan  divorced  the  Medical  and  Surgical  Section 
entirely  from  the  work  of  the  Department  of  Civil  Affairs 
and  combined  its  entire  activities  into  a  Medical  and  Sur- 
gical Department,  Burlingame  and  his  fellows  had  a  free 
hand  for  the  first  time,  a  full  opportunity  to  put  their  tri- 
partite policy  into  execution. 

For  a  time  Colonel  Fred  T.  Murphy  was  director  of  this 
newly  created  department.  On  January  6,  1919,  however, 
he  was  succeeded  by  Colonel  Burlingame,  who  had  been  so 
instrumental  in  framing  both  the  policies  and  carrying  out 
the  actual  operations  of  the  department.  On  that  same 
day  the  former  Medical  and  Surgical  Section  of  the  De- 
partment of  Military  Affairs  became  the  Bureau  of  Hos- 
pital Administration.  The  Bureau  of  Tuberculosis  was 
transferred  as  such  to  this  new  department,  as  was  also 
the  Children's  Bureau.  The  Women's  Bureau  of  Hospital 
Administration  which,  under  the  old  organization,  was 
reporting  to  the  general  manager,  became  the  Bureau  of 
Nurses,  while  the  work  for  the  mutiles,  which  was  being 
conducted  by  both  the  departments  of  Military  Affairs  and 
Civil  Affairs,  was  relegated  to  a  new  bureau. 

I  have  given  these  changes  in  some  detail  not  because 


SUPREME  MISSION  185 

they  were  in  themselves  so  vastly  important,  as  because 
they  tend  to  show.how  firm  a  grasp  Burlingame  gained  not 
only  on  the  operations  hut  upon  the  very  organization  of 
his  work.  He  did  not  reorganize ;  he  perfected,  and  finally 
was  able  to  perfect  even  the  Gibson  general  plan  of  or- 
ganization for  our  Red  Cross  in  France  which  was  recog- 
nized as  the  most  complete  thing  of  its  sort  that  had  been 
accomplished. 

For  the  purpose  of  better  understanding  the  activities  of 
this  bureau,  it  may  be  well  to  divide  its  activities  into  four 
great  classes.  The  first  of  these  would  group  those  activi- 
ties conducted  directly  by  the  Surgeon  General's  office  of 
the  United  States  Army,  but  to  which  our  Red  Cross  gave 
frequent  aid  in  the  line  of  supplies,  supplementing  those 
normally  furnished  through  the  usual  army  channels. 
Sometimes  not  only  supplies  but  personnel  was  furnished. 
Such  aid  was  given  upon  request  of  army  officers. 

Under  the  second  grouping  one  finds  those  great  hospi- 
tals, in  most  cases  established  by  the  American  Red  Cross 
while  the  medical  and  surgical  plans  of  our  army  were  still 
forming  and  were  in  a  most  unsettled  and  confused  state. 
These  were  known,  even  after  the  Surgeon  General  had 
taken  them  under  his  authority,  as  American  Red  Cross 
Military  Hospitals.  They  were  then  operated  jointly  by 
the  United  States  Army  and  our  Red  Cross;  the  army 
being  usually  responsible  for  the  scientific  care  and  disci- 
pline of  the  organization,  while  our  Red  Cross  took  upon 
its  shoulders  both  the  actual  business  management  and  the 
supplying  of  the  necessary  materials. 

The  third  and  fourth  groupings  are  smaller,  although,  in 
their  way,  hardly  less  consequential.  In  the  one  were  the 
American  Red  Cross  Hospitals  which  were  operated  purely 
for  military  purposes  and  for  which  the  American  Red 
Cross  assumed  the  full  responsibility  of  operation,  while  in 
the  other  were  the  hospitals,  infirmaries,  and  dispensaries 
which  were  operated  by  the  Red  Cross  —  in  some  few  cases 
jointly  with  the  other  organizations  —  for  the  benefit  of 


186     WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

civilians,  including  several  thousand  American  civilian  war 
workers  who  found  themselves  in  France  during  the  past 
two  years. 

If  I  have  bored  you  with  these  details  of  organization  it 
has  been  to  the  direct  purpose  that  you  might  the  better 
understand  how  this  important  phase  of  Red  Cross  opera- 
tion functioned.  Now,  for  the  moment,  forget  organiza- 
tion once  again.  Go  back  to  the  earlier  days  of  our  Red 
Cross  in  France  —  the  days  of  Grayson  M.-P.  Murphy  and 
James  H.  Perkins  and  their  fellows. 

None  of  these  men  either  realized  or  fully  understood 
either  the  importance  or  the  overwhelming  size  to  which 
the  hospital  function  of  the  United  States  Army  would 
attain  before  our  boys  had  been  in  actual  warfare  a  full 
year.  The  army  itself  did  not  realize  that.  Remember 
that  for  many  weeks  and  even  months  after  Pershing  had 
arrived  in  Paris  its  hospital  plans  were  in  embryo.  In 
this  situation  our  Red  Cross  found  one  of  its  earliest  op- 
portunities, and  rose  to  it.  With  Colonel  Lambert  —  he 
then  was  Major  Lambert  —  in  charge  of  its  Medical  and 
Surgical  Division  it  began  casting  about  to  see  how  it  might 
function  most  rapidly  and  most  efficiently. 

To  the  nucleus  of  the  army  that  began  pouring  into 
France  in  the  early  summer  of  1917,  it  began  the  distribu- 
tion of  emergency  stores  —  a  task  to  which  we  already  have 
referred  and  shall  refer  again.  It  hastily  secured  its  own 
storerooms  —  in  those  days  quite  remote  and  distant  from 
the  American  Relief  Clearing  House  and  the  other  general 
warehouses  of  the  American  Red  Cross  —  and  from  these 
in  July,  1917,  sent  to  1,116  hospitals,  practically  all  of 
them  French,  exactly  2,826  bales  of  supplies.  In  Decem- 
ber of  that  same  year  it  sent  to  1,653  hospitals  —  including 
by  this  time  many  American  ones  —  4,740  bales  of  similar 
supplies.  It  was  already  gaining  strength  unto  itself. 

Surgical  dressings  formed  an  important  portion  of  the 
contents  of  these  packages  Our  Red  Cross  did  not  wait 


SUPREME  MISSION  187 

upon  America  for  these ;  the  huge  plan  for  standardizing 
and  making  and  forwarding  these  from  the  United  States 
was  also  still  in  process  of  formation.  It  went  to  work  in 
Paris,  and  without  delay,  so  that  by  the  end  of  1917  two 
impressive  manufacturing  plants  were  at  work  there  —  one 
at  No.  118  Eue  de  la  Faisandre,  where  440  volunteer 
workers  and  a  hundred  paid  workers  were  averaging  some 
183,770  dressings  a  week,  and  a  smaller  establishment  at 
No.  25  Hue  Pierre  Charron,  where  a  hundred  volunteer 
and  ninety  paid  workers  were  at  similar  tasks.  Eventually 
a  third  workroom  was  added  to  these.  And  it  is  worth 
noting,  perhaps,  that  immediately  after  the  signing  of  the 
armistice  these  three  workrooms  were  turned  into  manu- 
factories for  production  of  influenza  masks,  for  which 
there  was  a  great  emergency  demand.  In  three  weeks 
they  turned  out  more  than  600,000  of  them. 

The  hospitalization  phases  of  the  Medical  and  Surgical 
Department  of  our  Red  Cross  over  there  were,  of  course, 
far  more  difficult  than  those  of  the  mere  production  or 
storage  of  dressings  and  other  medical  supplies.  And  they 
involved  a  vast  consideration  of  the  human  factors  of  the 
super-problem  of  the  conflict. 

"  In  this  war  there  were  two  kinds  of  fellows,"  Colonel 
Burlingame  told  me  one  evening  in  Paris  as  we  sat  talking 
together,  "  the  ones  who  went  over  the  top  and  those  who 
didn't.  It  was  up  to  the  second  bunch  to  look  out  for  the 
first  —  at  every  time  and  opportunity,  which  brings  us 
squarely  to  the  question  of  the  French  hospitals,  and  the 
American  soldiers  who  woke  up  to  find  themselves  in  them. 
You  see  the  Red  Cross  was  just  as  responsible  for  those 
fellows  as  for  the  ones  who  went  directly  into  our  own  hos- 
pitals over  here.  The  French  authorities  told  me  not  to 
worry  about  those  boys.  '  We  will  take  very  good  care  of 
them/  they  said,  and  so  they  meant  to  do.  '  Who  will  take 
care  ? '  I  asked  them  in  return. 

"  I  went  straight  to  one  of  the  chief  surgeons  of  their 


188     WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

army.  I  put  the  matter  to  him  as  plainly  as  I  could. 
'  You  are  the  best  ever/  I  said  to  him,  '  but  —  don't  you 
see  ?  —  you  are  tired  out.  We  want  to  help  you.  Can't 
we  ?  Won't  you  let  us  loan  you  nurses  and  other  American 
personnel  as  you  need  them  ? ' 

"  Would  they  ?  Say,  the  French  fell  for  that  suggestion 
like  ducks,  and  we  sent  them  thirty  or  forty  girls,  just  as 
a  beginning..  Can  you  think  of  what  it  would  mean  for 
one  of  our  Yankee  boys  wounded  in  a  French  hospital  and 
perhaps  ready  to  go  on  an  operating  table  to  lose  an  arm 
or  a  leg  and  then  finding  no  one  who  could  speak  his  kind 
of  language?  And  what  it  would  mean  if  a  nice  girl 
should  come  along  —  his  own  sort  of  a  nice  girl  —  ready  to 
let  him  spill  his  own  troubles  out  to  her  —  in  his  own  sort 
of  jargon?  " 

I  felt,  myself,  what  it  would  mean.  I  had  heard  before 
of  what  the  Red  Cross  Bureau  of  Hospital  Administration 
was  accomplishing  under  the  technical  designation  of  the 
Service  of  Professional  Aid  to  the  Service  de  Sante  —  this 
last  the  medical  division  of  the  French  Army  establish- 
ments. The  first  opportunity  for  this  service  came  when 
General  Pershing  told  Marshal  Foch  that  the  American 
Army  was  there  to  be  used  as  the  French  high  commander 
in  chief  saw  fit  to  use  it.  Whereupon  Foch  moved  quickly 
and  brigaded  our  men  with  his  between  Montdidier  and 
Soissons,  which  meant,  of  course,  the  evacuating  of  the 
casualties  through  the  French  hospitals.  The  helpless  con- 
dition of  our  American  boys  who  did  not  speak  French  — 
and  very  few  of  them  did  —  can  therefore  easily  be  imag- 
ined. They  could  not  tell  their  wishes  nor  be  advised  as  to 
what  was  going  to  be  done  with  them.  It  was  then  that 
Burlingame  sensed  the  situation  in  its  fullness;  that,  with 
much  diplomacy,  he  first  approached  Dr.  Vernet  Kleber, 
the  commander  of  the  French-American  section  of  the 
French  Service  de  Saute,  saying  that  he  realized  that  its 
service  had  been  taxed  to  the  uttermost  and  proffering  the 


SUPREME  MISSION  189 

use  of  American  Ked  Cross  personnel.  And  Dr.  Kleber 
accepted. 

The  thirty  or  forty  nurses  did  not  come  at  one  time. 
But  within  twenty-four  hours,  four  of  them  —  two  nurses 
and  two  nurses'  aids,  and  all  of  them  speaking  French  — 
were  dispatched  to  the  French  hospital  at  Soissons  where 
the  first  American  patients  were  being  received.  The 
movement  of  the  First  and  Second  Divisions  in  the  Beau- 
vais  and  Montdidier  sectors  right  after  increased  very 
greatly  this  flow  of  Yankee  doughboys  into  French  hospi- 
tals —  and  the  American  nurses  were  thrown  into  them  in 
far  greater  numbers.  Soon  a  still  more  definite  plan  was 
adopted,  which  resulted  in  American  nurses,  speaking 
French,  being  installed  in  each  and  every  French  military 
hospital  which  received  American  wounded.  Under  this 
arrangement  our  nurses  were  given  French  military  papers 
for  free  travel  —  at  the  very  outset,  one  of  the  many  time- 
saving  arrangements  in  a  situation  which  all  too  frequently 
was  a  race  between  time  and  death.  Another  time-saving 
scheme  provided  for  the  reassignment  of  nurses  used  by  the 
French  Service  de  Sante  without  the  necessity  of  approval 
in  advance  by  Paris  headquarters.  This  very  flexible  and 
sensible  plan  relieved  the  situation  of  much  red  tape  and 
made  for  immediate  results.  And  not  the  least  of  its  ad- 
vantages was  the  fact  that  it  actually  did  much  to  enhance 
the  entente  cordiale  of  the  fighting  forces  of  the  two  allied 
nations. 

The  first  call  for  nurses  under  this  new  arrangement 
came  in  May,  1918,  when  a  nurse  and  an  aid  were  sent  to 
the  French  Military  Hospital  at  Besangon.in  the  extreme 
east  of  France  and  south  of  the  fighting  zones.  The  second 
came  from  La  Bochelle,  down  on  the  Atlantic  coast.  After 
that  the  calls  were  almost  continuous,  until  our  American 
nurses  had  been  sent  to  all  corners  of  France ;  the  service 
covering  thirty-one  departments  and  eighty-eight  cities. 

Sometimes,  when  the  calls  were  particularly  urgent  and 


190     WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

the  distances  not  so  great,  the  nurses  were  sent  in  camion- 
ettes,  for  time  always  was  an  important  factor.  But  more 
often  the  nurse  and  her  aid  rode  by  rail,  armed  with  the 
military  permits  that  were  so  necessary  a  feature  of  travel 
in  France  during  the  days  of  the  actual  conflict.  One  of 
these  girls  wrote  quite  graphically  of  one  of  these  journeys. 

"  It  was  quite  dark ;  there  wasn't  a  light  in  the  car  or  in 
the  countryside/'  she  said.  "  Off  on  the  horizon  we  could 
see  the  guns  flashing.  A  very  nervous  man  sat  opposite 
me,  pulled  out  his  flashlight  about  every  five  minutes,  con- 
sulted his  time-table  and  announced  the  next  station.  Fi- 
nally he  alighted  and  the  only  way  that  we  knew  when  we 
had  reached  our  station  was  because  heads  appeared  at 
every  window  when  we  stopped,  asking  the  name  of  the 
stopping  place.  After  the  information  was  given  the  pas- 
sengers would  pile  out  for  that  particular  place  and  step 
into  the  inky  darkness.  After  which  they  might  resign 
themselves  to  spending  the  rest  of  the  night  curled  up  on 
one  of  the  uninviting  small  benches  in  the  station." 

The  diet  of  the  average  doughboy  and  the  average  poilu 
—  sick  or  well  —  was  almost  always  different.  To  accom- 
plish this  each  Red  Cross  nurse,  upon  being  sent  to  her  as- 
signment, was  given  small  sums  of  money  to  spend  for  the 
comfort  of  her  patients.  In  this  way  she  was  often  able  to 
obtain  such  things  as  milk,  eggs,  or  a  chop  for  a  Yankee 
boy  who  wearied  of  the  diet  constantly  given  to  the  poilu. 

These  nurses,  like  those  which  were  held  by  the  Red 
Cross  in  reserve  for  the  emergency  needs  of  our  army  in 
France,  were  in  direct  charge  of  the  Nurses'  Bureau  of 
Colonel  Burlingame's  department.  Incidentally,  this 
bureau  furnished  some  ten  thousand  nurses  in  France,  of 
whom  eight  thousand  were  army  reserves. 

The  great  need  of  this  service  in  the  French  hospitals  was 
shown  in  the  extensions  of  the  plan.  In  several  instances 
where  a  United  States  Army  hospital  unit  was  stationed 


SUPREME  MISSION  191 

near  a  French  one,  the  American  patients  were  gradually 
evacuated  to  it,  our  Red  Cross  nurses  being  retained  on 
duty  as  long  as  was  necessary.  There  were,  of  course, 
many  of  these  American  hospitals  —  some  of  which  you 
shall  come  to  see  before  you  are  finished  with  the  pages  of 
this  book.  In  all  of  these  our  Red  Cross  functioned,  both 
in  the  furnishing  of  many  of  their  supplies  as  well  as  in  the 
giving  of  entertainment  to  their  patients.  Of  all  these 
things,  more  in  good  time.  Consider  now,  if  you  please, 
the  distinctive  Red  Cross  hospitals  themselves  —  some  of 
which  long  preceded  in  France  the  coming  of  the  larger 
regulation  hospitals  of  the  United  Sates  Army. 

The  first  of  these  great  institutions  of  our  own  Red 
Cross  to  be  secured  over  there  —  it  bore  the  distinctive 
serial  title  of  Number  One  —  was  located  in  the  Neuilly 
suburban  district  of  Paris.  It  was  a  handsome  modern 
structure  of  brick  —  a  building  which  had  been  erected  for 
use  as  a  boarding  school  or  college.  It  was  barely  com- 
pleted at  the  time  of  the  first  outbreak  of  the  Great  War, 
and  so  was  easily  secured  by  a  group  of  patriotic  Ameri- 
cans in  Paris  and, —  then  designated  as  the  American 
Ambulance  Hospital, —  placed  at  the  service  of  the  French, 
who  then  were  in  grievous  need  of  such  assistance. 
When  we  came  into  the  war,  this  hospital,  which  contained 
between  five  and  six  hundred  beds,  was  put  under  the 
United  States  Army  and  the  American  Red  Cross  and 
turned  over  to  the  Red  Cross  for  actual  operation. 

American  Red  Cross  Hospital  Number  Two  —  a  private 
institution  of  the  highest  class  —  was  formerly  well  known 
to  the  American  colony  in  Paris  as  Dr.  Blake's.  Like  the 
Number  One,  it  was  one  of  the  chief  means  by  which  the 
Stars  and  Stripes  was  kept  flying  in  Europe  throughout  the 
early  years  of  the  war.  It  not  only  contained  three  hun- 
dred beds,  but  a  huge  Red  Cross  research  laboratory,  where 
a  corps  of  bacteriologists  was  quickly  put  to  work  under  the 
general  control  of  the  Surgeon  General's  office  of  the  army 


192     WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

and  making  valuable  investigations,  records,  and  sum- 
maries for  the  American  medical  profession  for  many  years 
to  come. 

Number  Three,  on  the  left  bank  of  the  Seine,  was  for  a 
time  known  as  the  Reid  Hospital.  It  was  at  one  time  a 
home  or  dormitory  for  girl  art  students  in  Paris.  Later  it 
was  transformed  into  a  hospital  by  Mrs.  Whitelaw  Reid  of 
New  York,  who  gave  it,  furnished  and  equipped,  to  the 
American  Red  Cross  and  arranged  to  pay  practically  all 
its  running  expenses.  It  was  a  comparatively  small  es- 
tablishment of  eighty  beds,  which  were  reserved  almost  en- 
tirely for  officers,  and  personnel  of  our  Red  Cross. 

From  this  most  modest  nucleus  there  was  both  steady 
and  rapid  growth  until,  at  the  time  of  the  signing  of  the 
armistice,  there  were  not  three  but  eight  of  the  Ajnerican 
Red  Cross  Military  Hospitals :  the  three  of  which  you  have 
just  read;  Number  One  in  Neuilly;  Number  Two  (Dr. 
Blake's)  in  Rue  Piccini;  Number  Three  (the  Reid  Hos- 
pital) in  the  Rue  de  Chevreuse ;  Number  Five,  the  tent  in- 
stitution which  sprang  up  on  the  famous  Bois  de  Boulogne 
race  course  at  Auteuil ;  Number  Six  at  Bellevue ;  Number 
Seven  at  Juilly;  Number  Eight  at  Malabry  (these  last 
three  in  the  suburbs  of  Paris),  and  Number  Nine  in  the 
Boulevard  des  Batignoles,  within  the  limits  of  the  city 
itself. 

The  so-called  American  Red  Cross  hospitals  were  gener- 
ally somewhat  smaller.  They  were  Number  100  at  Beau- 
caillou,  St.  Julien  in  the  Gironde,  Number  101  at  Neuilly, 
Number  102  at  Neuf chateau,  Number  103  also  at  Neuilly, 
Number  104  at  Beauvais,  with  an  annex  at  Chantilly,  Num- 
ber 105  at  Juilly,  Number  109  at  Evreux,  and  Number  113, 
the  Czecho-Slovak  Hospital,  at  Cognac.  In  addition  to 
these  there  was  a  further  group  of  smaller  hospitals,  which 
were  operated  in  the  same  way  as  the  American  Red  Cross 
military  hospitals.  These  included  Number  107  at  Jouy- 
sur-Morin,  Number  110  at  Villers-Daucourt,  Number  111 


SUPREME  MISSION  193 

at  Chateau-Thierry,  Number  112  in  the  Rue  Boileau,  Paris, 
Evacuation  Hospital  Number  114  at  Fleury-sur-Aire  in 
the  Vosges,  Base  Hospital  Number  41  at  St.  Denis,  and 
Base  Hospital  No.  82  at  Toul.  While  outside  of  all  of 
these  lists  were  three  small  institutions  in  Paris,  operated 
in  cooperation  with  the  French,  but  far  too  unimportant  to 
be  listed  here. 

There  were  twenty-six  of  these  American  Red  Cross 
hospitals  of  one  form  or  another  established  in  France 
through  the  war.  Yet,  impressive  as  this  list  might  seem 
to  be  at  a  first  glance,  it,  of  course,  falls  far  short  of  the 
great  total  of  the  regular  base  and  evacuation  hospitals  set 
up  by  the  Medical  Corps  of  our  army  throughout  France 
and  the  occupied  districts  of  Germany.  Yet  even  these,  as 
we  shall  see  presently,  were  constantly  dependent  upon  the 
functioning  of  our  Red  Cross.  And,  after  all,  it  was 
chiefly  a  question  of  the  mere  form  of  organization. 

"  Form  ?  "  said  Colonel  Burlingame  to  me  that  same 
evening  as  we  sat  together  in  Paris.  "  What  do  you  mean 
by  form?  There  is  no  such  thing  —  not  in  war,  at  any 
event.  When  they  used  to  come  to  me  with  their  red  tape 
tangles  I  would  bring  them  up  with  a  quick  turn,  saying : 
e  See  here,  the  Red  Cross  is  not  engaged  in  winning  the 
war  for  the  Allies,  or  even  for  the  good  old  U.  S.  A.  We 
are  here  to  help  the  United  States  win  the  war.7 ' 

Not  such  a  fine  distinction  as  it  might  first  seem  to  be. 

"  That  was  our  principle  and  we  stuck  by  it/'  continued 
Burlingame.  "  And  any  one  who  deviated  from  it  got 
bumped,  and  bumped  hard." 

You  could  trust  the  young  military  surgeon  for  that,  just 
as  his  own  superior  officers  could  trust  him  to  produce  re- 
sults, time  and  time  again.  For  instance  there  was  that 
week  in  July  when  the  news  came  to  him  —  through  an 
entirely  unofficial  but  highly  authentic  channel  —  that  the 
First  and  Second  Divisions  of  the  United  States  Army 
were  going  to  be  used  somewhere  near  Chateau-Thierry  as 
shock  troops  against  the  continued  German  drive.  For 


194     WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

weeks  past  he  had  been  carefully  watching  the  big  war  map 
of  France  that  hung  upon  the  wall  of  his  office,  indicating 
upon  it  with  tiny  pin  flags  the  steady  oncoming  of  the 
enemy.  And  in  all  those  weeks  he  had  been  making  pretty 
steady  and  definite  plans  against  the  hour  when  he  would 
be  called  upon  to  act,  and  to  act  quickly. 

Already  he  had  formed  that  habit  of  quick  action. 
Once,  it  was  the  seventeenth  of  June,  I  think,  he  had  had 
good  opportunity  to  use  it.  The  First  and  Second  were 
already  in  action  along  the  Marne,  brigaded  with  the 
French,  and  Burlingame  was  driving  along  the  rear  of  their 
positions.  But  he  supposed  that  the  Divisions  were  in  re- 
serve ;  he  did  not  realize  that  it  was  in  actual  fighting,  not 
at  least  until  he  espied  a  dust-covered  and  wounded  Amer- 
ican quartermaster  sergeant  staggering  down  the  road. 
The  Red  Cross  man  stopped  his  car  and  put  the  wounded 
man  into  it. 

"  What  are  you  doing  here  ?  "  he  demanded. 

"  I  got  hit  —  with  a  machine  gun,"  stated  the  sergeant. 
"  That  is,  I  was  with  the  machine  gun.  I'd  never  seen 

one  of  the  d d  things  before,  but  we  were  fighting.  I 

got  a  squad  around  me  and  we  tackled  it.  We  were  making 
the  old  bus  hum  when  —  well,  they  tickled  me  with  a  lot 
of  shrapnel." 

Burlingame  waited  for  no  further  explanations.  He 
headed  his  car  around  and  at  top  speed  raced  back  to  Paris. 
As  he  rode  he  studied  a  pocket  map  that  he  always  had  with 
him.  Montmirial!  That  was  the  place  he  had  set  out 
in  his  mental  plans  for  this  sort  of  emergency;  in  just  this 
sort  of  an  emergency. 

The  stop  at  Paris  was  short;  just  long  enough  to  load 
some  fifteen  tons  of  hospital  supplies  in  the  swiftest  trucks 
Major  Osborne's  Transportation  Department  could  supply, 
to  pick  up  the  highly  capable  Miss  Julia  Stimson  —  then 
chief  nurse  of  the  American  Red  Cross  —  then  off  to  the 
front  once  again.  Beyond  the  fact  that  the  emergency 


SUPREME  MISSION  195 

hospital  would  be  somewhere  in  the  neighborhood  of  Mont- 
mirial,  the  destination  of  the  swift-moving  caravan  was 
quite  uncertain.  Burlingame  and  Miss  Stimson  were  both 
route  makers  and  pace  makers.  They  led  the  way  right 
up  behind  the  front-line  positions,  to  the  chief  surgeon  of 
that  portion  of  the  French  Army  with  which  the  First  Divi- 
sion was  then  brigaded.  An  American  colonel  was  talking 
to  a  Frenchman  at  the  moment 

"  We're  here/'  reported  Burlingame. 

"  Who's  we  ?  "  asked  the  Yankee  officer. 

"  The  emergency  hospital  of  the  American  Red  Cross," 
was  the  instant  reply. 

The  French  staff  located  the  outfit  immediately,  in  an 
ancient  chateau  at  Jouy-sur-Morin  near  by,  which  imme- 
diately became  A.  R.  O.  Military  Hospital  lumber  107  - 
and  in  a  single  memorable  day  evacuated  some  1,400  Amer- 
ican wounded. 

It  took  real  work  and  lots  of  it  to  set  up  such  a  hospital 
as  this ;  also  an  appreciable  amount  of  actual  equipment. 
First  there  came  the  tents  and  the  cots  —  the  most  import- 
ant parts  of  a  mobile  evacuation  hospital  —  afterward,  in 
orderly  but  quick  sequence,  the  portable  operating  room, 
with  four  tables  designed  for  the  simultaneous  work  of  four 
operating  teams;  each  consisting  of  a  chief  surgeon,  an 
assistant,  two  orderlies,  and  two  women  nurses.  The 
tables  were,  of  course,  but  the  beginning  of  the  operating- 
room  equipment  alone.  There  had  to  be  huge  quantities 
of  instruments,  anaesthetizing  tools,  and  the  like. 

"  Not  merely  half  a  dozen  forceps,"  says  Burlingame, 
"  but  dozens  upon  dozens  of  them." 

"  How  could  you  get  them  all  together  ?  "  I  asked  him. 

"  It  was  easy.  We  figured  it  all  out  —  when  we  still 
had  less  than  fifty  thousand  American  soldiers  in  France. 
So  that  when  we  had  a  call  for  an  operating-room  outfit 
we  did  not  have  to  stop  and  wonder  what  we  should  send 
out  for  a  well-equipped  one.  All  that  was  done  well  in 


196     WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

advance,  with  the  result  that  in  the  high-pressure  months 
of  May  and  June,  1918,  we  began  to  reap  the  benefits 
of  all  the  dirty  work  and  the  drudgery  of  the  fall  of 
1917." 

I  interrupted  myself  —  purposely.  I  was  talking  of 
that  first  week  in  July  when  the  word  came  that  the  First 
and  Second  Divisions  —  no  longer  brigaded  with  the 
French,  but  standing  by  themselves  as  integral  factors  of 
the  United  States  Army  —  were  going  into  action  at 
Chateau-Thierry.  The  results  of  that  action  need  no  re- 
counting here.  They  have  passed  into  the  pages  of  Amer- 
ican history  along  with  Saratoga  and  Yorktown  and  Gettys- 
burg and  Appomattox.  They  are  not  germane  here  and 
now  to  the  telling  of  this  story  of  our  Ked  Cross  in  action. 
It  is  germane,  however,  to  know  that  within  fifteen  minutes 
of  the  receipt  of  the  news  of  the  beginning  of  the  Chateau- 
Thierry  fight,  Burlingame  of  the  Ajnerican  Eed  Cross  was 
in  his  swift  automobile  and  on  his  way  there. 

Information  already  had  reached  him  that  our  troops 
were  to  be  pushed  northward  from  Chateau-Thierry  and 
the  sectors  about  Rheims  and  southeastward  from  Mont- 
didier.  Acting  upon  this  somewhat  meager  information 
he  headed  his  machine  straight  toward  Soissons.  A  wild 
ride  it  was,  every  mile  of  it;  for  Burlingame  well  knew 
that  every  moment  counted  in  the  crucial  battle  against 
the  Germans. 

From  time  to  time  he  would  meet  motor  cars  or  camions 
or  little  groups  of  soldiers  who,  in  response  to  his  signal- 
ings, would  stop  and  frankly  tell  him  what  they  knew  about 
the  position  or  the  movement  of  our  army.  But  all  this 
information  was  also  meager,  and  much  of  it  was  contra- 
dictory. Finally,  however,  at  an  obscure  crossroads  he 
stumbled  upon  a  group  of  more  than  ordinary  intelligent 
Yanks  who  gave  him  news  which  seemed  so  accurate  and 
so  vital  that  he  halted  his  car  and  pulled  out  his  road 
maps.  He  located  himself  quickly.  And  it  was  not  a 


SUPREME  MISSION  197 

long  guess  that  decided  him  then  and  there  to  establish  a 
hospital. 

Remember,  if  you  will,  that  this  man  Burlingame  is 
exceedingly  long  on  common  sense,  quick  thinking,  and 
quick  acting ;  short,  if  you  please,  on  that  abominable  thing 
known  as  red  tape.  Sensing  the  situation  with  a  keenness 
that,  in  the  light  of  after  events,  was  uncanny,  he  decided 
that,  when  the  clash  came,  it  would  come  midway  between 
Soissons  and  Chateau-Thierry,  a  little  to  the  east  of  the 
point  where  he  had  halted  his  car.  And  there  it  came. 
"  It  was  bound  to  be  a  hard  bump/'  said  he,  and  so  it  was. 

He  at  once  got  in  touch  with  the  American  Red  Cross 
warehouses  at  Beauvais  and  at  Paris  and  ordered  medical 
and  surgical  and  hospital  supplies  in  abundance  forwarded 
to  Chantilly  —  the  point  where  he  had  so  quickly  decided 
he  would  locate  the  emergency  evacuation  hospital.  He 
ordered  eight  surgeons,  sixteen  nurses,  and  twelve  enlisted 
men,  who  were  on  duty  at  A.  R.  C.  Hospital  Number  104, 
at  Beauvais,  to  proceed  at  once  to  Chantilly,  where  they 
were  met  by  additional  Red  Cross  personnel  sent  on  direct 
from  Paris.  He  made  arrangements  with  the  Ambulance 
St.  Paul,  which  was  then  located  at  Chantilly,  to  establish 
the  material  and  men  and  women  being  rushed  from  Paris 
and  from  Beauvais  as  an  annex  to  its  formation.  Thus, 
in  a  mere  twelve  hours,  was  established  an  American  hos- 
pital along  the  French  lines  of  communication. 

And  none  too  quickly.  On  the  following  morning  the 
big  fighting  set  in  to  the  north  of  Chateau-Thierry.  And 
within  a  few  hours  the  American  wounded  began  pouring 
into  the  old  French  chateau  town  of  Chantilly.  In  three 
weeks  just  1,364  of  our  boys  had  been  accommodated  in  our 
emergency  Red  Cross  hospital  there ;  after  which  there  was 
a  shifting  of  positions  and  of  armies  with  a  removal  of  the 
victorious  Americans  to  other  sectors,  and  only  French 
were  left  in  the  neighborhood.  Which,  in  turn,  rendered  it 
quite  easy  for  our  Red  Cross  to  turn  over  the  entire  equip- 
ment to  our  French  allies,  who  stood  in  great  need  of  it. 


198     WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

Chateau-Thierry  was  in  fact  the  first  really  great  test  of 
the  American  Bed  Cross.  It  was  its  first  opportunity  to 
perform  its  chief  and  most  vital  service  —  the  succoring  of 
the  wounded  men  of  the  United  States  Army.  It  met  that 
test.  As  a  single  example  of  the  many  ways  in  which  it 
met  the  test  consider  the  request  for  three  thousand 
blankets,  in  addition  to  several  thousand  pillows,  pajamas, 
dressings,  surgical  instruments,  and  medicines  that  poured 
in  upon  the  Bureau  of  Hospital  Administration  at  Baris 
at  four  o'clock  on  the  afternoon  of  the  eighteenth  of  July. 
Osborne's  department  was  a  little  short  of  motor  cars  at 
that  particular  moment;  the  continued  emergency  at 
Chateau-Thierry,  with  the  multifold  demands  that  it 
brought  upon  every  function  of  the  Bed  Cross,  had  fairly 
exhausted  his  garages.  There  might  be  cars  in,  in  a 
few  hours,  said  the  transportation  dispatchers.  But  Bur- 
lingame's  men  took  no  such  chances.  They  poured  down 
from  out  of  the  Begina  headquarters  and,  taking  their 
places  in  the  middle  of  the  Bue  de  Bivoli,  halted  and 
commandeered  taxicabs  as  they  hove  in  sight. 

With  a  half  dozen  of  the  Barisian  "  one  lungers " 
screeching  their  very  souls  out  in  the  second  speeds,  they 
visited  four  of  the  Baris  warehouses  in  quick  succession. 
A  truck  was  brought  up  out  of  the  offing.  By  eight  o'clock 
it  was  loaded,  and  by  midnight  it  was  at  the  firing  line 
and  being  unloaded  of  its  precious  supplies. 

On  another  night  during  the  same  battle,  a  veteran 
army  surgeon  major  arrived  in  Baris  at  one  o'clock  in 
the  morning.  He  found  the  medical  offices  of  the  Bed 
Cross  open  —  there  were  no  hours  in  those  strenuous 
days  when  one  found  them  closed  —  and  demanded  sup- 
plies. The  man  was  faint  from  lack  of  sleep.  He  was 
put  in  bed  for  120  minutes  —  not  one  minute  less,  not 
one  minute  more.  When  he  was  awakened,  his  supplies 
were  at  the  door.  They  had  been  gathered  in  a  motor 
truck  from  three  warehouses  immediately  roundabout. 


SUPREME  MISSION  199 

Later  this  army  man  returned  to  Paris  and  reported  that 
the  work  of  our  Ked  Cross  that  night  had  made  it  possible 
for  every  man  in  his  Division  to  have  a  chance  for  recovery. 
H!ad  it  not  been  for  the  supplies,  he  added,  sixty  per 
cent  of  them  might  have  died. 

But  it  was  in  the  quick  establishment  of  hospitals  that 
I  think  that  Burlingame's  function  of  the  Red  Cross  at- 
tained its  most  satisfactory  as  well  as  its  most  dramatic 
results.  Take  Number  110  at  Coincy,  also  no  great  dis- 
tance from  Chateau-Thierry.  It,  too,  sprang  up  as  a  direct 
result  of  that  famous  battle.  A  radical  change  of  loca- 
tion of  our  troops  in  that  territory  and  increasing  activities 
in  the  neighborhood  of  Fere-en-Tardenois  made  an  Ameri- 
can evacuation  hospital  at  or  near  that  point  an  immediate 
necessity.  Burlingame,  in  the  same  trusty  motor  which 
carried  him  so  many  miles  over  the  battle-scarred  and 
shell-holed  and  traffic-worn  highroads  of  France,  went  out 
with  Colonel  Stark,  of  the  Regular  Army  force,  to  find  a 
site  for  it.  They  decided  on  a  little  town  of  Coincy,  on 
the  direct  main  line  of  evacuation  from  the  American 
sector. 

The  only  things  that  stood  in  favor  of  Coincy  were  its 
location  and  the  fact  that  it  had  water.  There  was  little 
else  left  there ;  not  a  chateau  or  a  ruined  church  or  even  a 
barn  in  which  to  locate,  temporarily  at  least,  a  hospital. 
Moreover,  there  was  no  time  for  picking  or  choosing  in 
that  country  through  which  the  boche  in  the  beginnings 
of  his  final  retreat  had  just  passed.  In  the  center  of  some 
partly  demolished  buildings,  Stark  and  Burlingame  found 
a  pump,  still  in  working  order.  This,  they  decided,  would 
make  a  splendid  site  for  their  new  hospital.  The  road 
which  ran  close  by  the  ruins  was  the  main  road  to  the  front 
—  not  far  away,  as  the  constant  booming  of  artillery  at- 
tested —  and  the  fact  that  the  railroad  also  was  fairly  near 
simplified  the  problem  of  evacuations.  These  two  factors, 


200     WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

together  with  that  of  the  water,  which  was  both  pure 
and  abundant  —  the  French  already  had  marked  the 
pump,  "  Eau  potable  "  -  decided  the  question. 

So  the  two  men  staked  a  claim  to  the  ruin.  Before  they 
returned  to  the  car  Burlingame  picked  up  a  piece  of 
board.  He  fished  a  bit  of  charred  wood  out  of  the  debris. 
It  served  as  chalk.  With  it  he  began  slowly  marking  the 
board:  "A.  E.  C.  Hospital  No.  -  — ."  He  hesitated  for 
just  a  moment.  What  the  deuce  was  the  number  of  that 
last  hospital?  Well,  no  matter.  Number  110  would  do. 
And  Number  110  it  became  and  so  remained  even  after 
the  hospital  was  ancient  —  whole  weeks  ancient  —  and 
finally  had  been  moved  to  Villers-Daucourt. 

"  And  so  with  a  little  burned  wood,  a  piece  of  busted 
wall,  and  a  cow  yard,  the  most  advanced  American  hos- 
pital in  the  battle  of  the  Vesle  started  in,"  says  Burlin- 
game. "  We  took  our  burned-wood  sign,  fastened  over 
the  pump — and,  voila,  there  was  Eed  Cross  Hospital 
Number  110.  And  then  we  hustled  to  the  first  military 
telephone  and  began  phoning  Paris  and  other  Eed  Cross 
headquarters  to  hustle  the  stuff  out  to  it.  c  Send  it  up  the 
road  from  Fere-en-Tardenois/  I  told  them, '  until  you  come 
to  the  cow  yard  with  the  sign.  Only  look  out  you  don't 
miss  the  sign.'  .  .  .  And  all  the  time  it  was  raining  like 
hell." 

One  other  of  these  Red  Cross  hospitals  deserves  especial 
mention  in  the  pages  of  this  book  —  the  tented  institu- 
tion upon  the  race  course  at  Auteuil  just  outside  the  forti- 
fications of  Paris.  This  institution,  situated  within  the 
confines  of  the  lovely  Bois-de-Boulogne,  also  was  estab- 
lished to  meet  the  hospital  necessities  arising  at  the  crux 
of  the  German  drive  of  1918.  It  was  first  planned  to  take 
cases  far  advanced  toward  recovery  and  so  to  relieve  the 
badly  overcrowded  Eed  Cross  hospitals  at  Neuilly  and 
other  points  in  the  metropolitan  district  of  Paris.  And 
because  of  this  type  of  cases,  and  the  fact  that  summer 


SUPREME  MISSION  201 

was  close  at  hand,  it  was  felt  that  tent  structures  properly 
builded  and  floored  could  be  used,  and  so  much  time  saved. 

That  at  least  was  the  plan  in  May  when  the  race  course 
was  commandeered  through  the  French  authorities  and 
work  begun.  In  twenty-one  days  the  hospital  was  com- 
pleted with  six  hundred  beds,  while  draughtsmen  were 
preparing  to  increase  its  capacity  to  twenty-four  hundred 
beds. 

But  as  the  ~boche  came  closer  and  closer  to  Paris,  that 
original  plan  was  quickly  swept  aside,  and  even  the  Ked 
Cross  made  quick  plans  to  transfer  its  general  head- 
quarters to  Tours  or  some  other  city  well  to  the  south  of 
France.  Auteuil  became,  not  a  convalescent  resort,  but 
a  military  emergency  hospital  of  the  first  class  —  Ameri- 
can Bed  Cross  Hospital  Number  Five,  if  you  please.  It 
soon  reached  great  proportions.  In  the  five  months  that 
marked  its  career  —  from  May  30  until  the  end  of  October, 
1918  —  it  received  8,315  patients  who  had  a  total  of 
183,733  days  of  hospital  treatment  and  2,101  operations. 
Nearly  five  per  cent  of  all  the  surgical  cases  of  our  army 
in  France  passed  through  its  portals.  And  when  under 
the  sudden  and  almost  unexpected  pressure  that  was 
placed  upon  it,  it  found  itself  seriously  short  of  personnel 
—  the  men  and  women  already  working  it  fatigued  al- 
most to  the  point  of  exhaustion  —  nurses  and  other  workers 
were  drawn  from  the  Children's  Bureau,  the  Tuberculosis 
Bureau,  and  other  functions  of  the  American  Red  Cross. 
They  were  not  registered  nurses,  to  be  sure,  with  neat  little 
engraved  diplomas  in  their  trunks,  but  they  were  both  will- 
ing and  efficient.  And  that,  at  that  time,  was  all  that  was 
necessary.  I  think  that  I  have  already  referred  to  our  Red 
Cross  in  France  as  a  mobile  institution. 

When  the  Auteuil  plan  was  first  brought  to  the  atten- 
tion of  the  officers  of  the  Medical  Corps  of  our  army  they 
were  inclined  to  scoff  at  it.  To  them  it  seemed  vast, 
visionary,  impracticable.  And  as  Burlingame  went  stead- 
ily ahead  with  his  plan  —  in  those  days,  remember,  it 


202     WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

was  to  be  chiefly  a  rest  camp  —  there  were  folk  even  in 
the  ranks  of  the  Red  Cross  who  criticized  it.  Then 
it  was  that  Burlingame  answered  criticism,  not  by  draw- 
ing in  on  his  plans,  but  by  greatly  extending  them,  by 
planning  to  build  a  full  surgical  evacuation  hospital  out 
there  on  the  race  course  in  the  park.  The  criticisms  grew, 
and  finally  Perkins,  whom  you  already  know  as  the  head 
of  the  Red  Cross  organization  in  France,  called  the  young- 
doctor  to  him. 

"  They  say  that  we  already  have  two  excellent  Red 
Cross  surgical  hospitals  here  in  Paris  and  that  they  are 
quite  enough,"  suggested  Perkins. 

"  We  shall  need  more,"  insisted  the  hospital  expert  of 
his  organization. 

"  The  medical  sharps  in  the  army  don't  think  that  it  is 
necessary,"  added  the  Commissioner. 

"  Then  they  are  wrong,"  said  Burlingame.  "  We  are 
going  to  need  Auteuil  —  and  we  are  going  to  need  it 
mighty  badly." 

"  Then  go  to  it,  Major,"  said  Perkins. 

And  Burlingame  went  to  it,  with  the  results  that  we 
have  just  seen,  while  those  very  army  men  who  came  to 
scoff  at  Auteuil  remained  to  praise  it  —  in  unmeasured 
terms. 

"  It  was  a  godsend,"  said  Colonel  Samuel  Wadhams, 
medical  officer  on  General  Pershing's  staff.  "  I  don't  know 
what  we  would  have  done  without  it." 

Done  without  it  ?  I  sometimes  wonder  what  the  Ameri- 
can Army  really  would  have  done  without  the  hospitals 
of  the  American  Red  Cross.  Although  far  fewer  in  num- 
ner  than  its  own,  they  performed  a  valorous  service  indeed. 
In  the  six  great  eventful  months  from  the  first  of  June  to 
the  first  of  December,  1918,  these  Red  Cross  hospitals 
together  furnished  an  excess  of  1,110,000  days  of  hospital 
care  to  our  troops,  which  was  approximately  the  same  as 
giving  to  every  battle  casualty  in  the  A.  E.  F.  five  days  of 
care.  It  admitted  to  its  hospitals  a  total  of  89,539  sick 


SUPREME  MISSION  203 

and  wounded  men,  and  cared  for  them  —  not  merely  ade- 
quately, but  with  a  real  degree  of  comfort  —  at  a  total  cost 
of  9.57  francs  (a  fraction  less  than  two  dollars)  a  day. 

Back  of,  and  closely  allied  to,  these  distinctive  Red 
Cross  hospitals  were  several  groups  of  auxiliary  institu- 
tions, which  also  had  been  financed  and  equipped  and  were 
under  the  care  of  our  American  Red  Cross.  The  first  of 
these  groups  was  that  of  the  military  dispensaries,  the 
value  of  whose  work  can  be  roughly  estimated  by  the  fact 
that  Number  Two,  down  at  Brest,  cared  for  1,751  cases  in 
the  first  month  of  its  existence.  The  others  of  the  so- 
called  permanent  dispensaries  were  at  Bordeaux,  Lorient, 
Nantes,  Neuilly,  Paris,  and  St.  Nazaire,  while  temporary 
ones  were  operated  from  time  to  time  and  as  the  emer- 
gency demanded  at  Dijon,  Senlis,  Verberie,  Compiegne, 
and  La  Rochelle. 

Nine  American  Red  Cross  infirmaries  were  operated 
at  base  ports  and  along  the  lines  of  communication  for 
our  doughboys.  These  served  —  and  served  efficiently  — 
men  taken  ill  on  trains,  or  casuals  passing  through.  Dur- 
ing October,  1918,  one  of  them  treated  659  cases,  while 
another  in  three  weeks  had  850  cases,  while  with  the  in- 
crease of  deportation  of  our  sick  and  wounded  the  work 
of  our  Red  Cross  infirmaries  was  greatly  increased.  In 
November,  567-  cases  passed  through  the  one  at  Brest  and 
in  the  following  month  6,549  cases  through  the  Bordeaux 
infirmary.  In  addition  to  these  two  most  important  base 
ports,  infirmaries  were  also  operated  at  Dijon,  Bourges, 
Angers,  Nantes,  Tours,  Limoges  and  St.  Nazaire. 

A  still  more  interesting  line  of  Red  Cross  work  closely 
allied  to  its  hospitals  was  in  the  convalescent  homes  which 
it  established  at  various  places  in  Erance,  almost  invariably 
at  points  which  had  especial  charm  of  scenery  or  climate 
to  recommend  them.  There  were  eleven  of  these;  at  St. 
Julien,  at  Biarritz,  at  Morgat,  at  St.  Cloud,  at  Vetau,  at 
Le  Croisdc,  at  Rochefort-en-Terre,  at  Villegenic-le-Buis- 


204:     WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

son,  at  Hisseau-sur-Cosson,  at  Avignac,  and  at  Antibes. 
In  some  cases,  these  were  established  in  resort  hotels,  tem- 
porarily commandeered  for  the  purpose  and  in  others  in 
some  of  the  loveliest  of  the  chateaux  of  France.  It  so  hap- 
pened, however,  that  our  convalescent  home  at  Antibes, 
at  the  very  point  where  the  Alps  come  down  to  meet  the 
sea,  was  in  a  hostelry  —  the  Hotel  du  Cap  d' Antibes, 
Through  the  courtesy  of  a  young  Eed  Cross  woman  who 
was  housed  there  for  a  time  as  a  patient  I  am  able  to  pre- 
sent a  picture  of  the  life  there  —  a  picture  which  seems 
to  have  been  fairly  typical  of  all  those  immensely  valuable 
homes. 

"It  is  a  quiet  place,"  she  writes,  "truly  peace  after 
war  —  and  there  the  tired  nurses  and  workers  find  the 
rest  they  need.  Those  who  want  to  be  really  gay  must  go 
to  Nice,  Cannes,  or  Monte  Carlo.  In  the  morning  nearly 
every  one  goes  out  on  the  rocks  with  a  rug  and  a  book  for 
a  sun  bath.  But  if  you  had  as  fascinating  a  perch  as 
my  favorite  one  it  would  have  to  be  an  absorbing  tale  that 
could  hold  your  attention.  For,  from  the  warm  wave- 
worn  rock  that  made  a  comfortable  seat,  I  could  look  out 
across  a  broad  sweep  of  blue  water  to  a  ragged  range  of 
dark-blue  mountains  against  the  paler  blue  sky.  To  the 
left  is  a  little  point  of  rocks  where  some  one  had  built  a 
villa  in  the  shape  of  a  Moslem  mosque,  which  raised 
crescent-tipped  domes  and  towers  from  among  a  grove  of 
dark-green  firs  and  gray-green  cactus.  To  the  right,  where 
the  mountain  peninsula  joins  the  mainland,  the  coast 
sweeps  toward  me  in  long,  tawny  curves.  Villas  make 
tiny  dots  among  the  green  of  the  hills  and  along  the  shore, 
while  at  a  distance,  but  I  know  that  near  by  one  finds  in 
them  a  variety  of  shades  of  cream  and  buff,  yellow  and 
pink,  and  above  the  last  bit  of  coast  to  the  extreme  right 
rise  snow-capped  Alps. 

"  If  one  is  restless  there  are  rocks  to  climb  and  fasci- 
nating paths  to  explore.  One  leads  over  the  rocks,  around 


SUPREME  MISSION  205 

a  wall,  and  tip  through  a  jungle-like  tangle  of  neglected 
gardens  and  walks  into  the  estate  belonging  to  the  King  of 
the  Belgians.  The  villa,  begun  before  the  war,  is  un- 
finished now,  but  a  truly  adventurous  spirit  will  go  on  past 
it  and  be  well  rewarded.  In  what  was  once  a  formal  gar- 
den, hyacinths  and  many  colored  anemones  are  blooming  in 
the  long  grass ;  roses  nod  gayly  from  the  walls,  and  almond 
blossoms  lift  their  delicate  pink  flowers  against  that  glo- 
rious sky.  In  a  grove  of  olive  trees  near  by,  narcissus 
and  daffodils  are  scattered  in  thick  clumps  here  and  there. 
There  is  a  fragrance  in  the  air  that  is  like  spring  at  home. 

"  Noon  at  Cap  d'Antibes  brings  every  one  together 
for  lunch  and  after  that  some  go  back  to  the  rocks,  others 
to  their  rooms,  and  still  more  take  the  afternoon  bus  to 
Cannes.  You  can  shop  there  and  get  your  films  developed 
and  your  hair  washed,  but  of  course  there  are  far  greater 
attractions.  From  three  until  four  an  American  band 
plays  in  the  pavilion  and  all  the  world  walks  down  the 
promenade  to  hear  — '  Smiles,'  '  The  Long,  Long  Trail/ 
and  '  Over  There.'  Just  such  a  band  played  just  such 
tunes  last  summer  at  lunch  time  on  the  White  House  lot 
in  Washington  —  only  there  the  audience  was  composed 
of  hundreds  and  hundreds  of  women  and  girls  —  war 
workers  —  with  a  few  men  in  uniform,  while  at  Cannes 
it  is  the  other  way  about.  The  place  simply  swarms  with 
American  boys  on  leave  or  convalescence,  officers  and  men, 
and  besides  their  familiar  khaki  there  is  plenty  of  horizon 
blue  and  the  mustard-colored  coats  of  Moroccans,  with 
red  fezzes  atop.  There  are  French  women,  of  course,  and 
then  a  handful  of  Red  Cross  and  '  Y '  girls,  nurses,  and 
foreign  sisters. 

"  There  are  a  variety  of  places  to  go  for  tea  —  from  the 
conventional,  cosmopolitan  rooms  of  the  Carlton  or  Kum- 
plemeyer's  to  the  '  Y '  canteen  where  one  can  get  good  hot 
chocolate  and  bread  and  jam  for  forty-five  centimes.  This 
'  Y/  by  the  way,  is  considered  their  star  establishment. 
There  are  reading  and  billiard  rooms,  movies  and  dancing ; 


206  WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

and  on  Sundays,  services  are  held  where  one  used  to  play 
roulette. 

"  There  is  also  a  Y.  M.  C.  A.  club  for  officers,  and  here 
there  is  dancing  to  be  had  as  well  as  tea.  But  at  five 
o'clock  the  girls  for  the  Cap  must  run,  or  they  will  miss 
the  bus  going  back  No  one  wants  to  do  that,  and  miss, 
too,  the  pleasant  ride  along  the  coast  with  the  sunset  glow- 
ing back  of  the  Esperal  Mountains  and  shimmering  in  a 
thousand  colors  across  the  ripples  of  the  quiet  sea;  espe- 
cially when  the  alternative  to  missing  the  bus  is  an  hour's 
ride  on  a  French  i  tram.'  So,  singing  as  a  rule,  the  bus- 
load swings  along  the  smooth  white  road  with  twenty-five 
or  thirty  girls,  as  like  as  not,  in  the  places  where  fifteen 
are  supposed  to  be. 

"  That  same  big  bus  is  used  several  times  a  week  to 
take  parties  for  the  long  ride  along  the  Riviera,  to  Nice, 
Monte  Carlo,  and  Menton  —  one  of  the  supremely  beau- 
tiful drives  of  the  world.  There  is  an  hour's  stop  in 
Nice,  another  in  Monte  Carlo  for  lunch,  and  then,  after  a 
glimpse  of  the  Italian  border,  the  party  turns  back.  The 
Hotel  Cap  d'Antibes,  with  its  many  lights,  looks  very 
pleasant  after  the  long,  cold  ride  —  it  is  always  cold  on 
the  Riviera  after  the  sun  goes  down  —  and  dinner,  always 
good,  tastes  especially  so  to  the  hungry  tourists. 

"  The  Cap  is  too  isolated  to  be  gay  in  the  evening ;  but, 
after  all,  most  of  the  women  there  have  come  to  rest  and 
recuperate,  so  they  are  glad  of  a  quiet  game  of  bridge,  a 
book  before  the  open  fire,  or  a  short  walk  in  the  magic  of 
southern  moonlight.  The  energetic  younger  ones  usually 
pull  back  the  rugs  and  dance  —  a  hen  party,  to  be  sure ; 
fun  just  the  same,  if  one  judges  by  the  faces  of  the  girls. 
There  is  generally  singing,  too.  One  nurse  while  I  was 
there  had  a  very  lovely  voice  (you  kept  thinking  how  much 
pleasure  she  must  have  been  able  to  give  the  men  in  her 
ward)  and  after  she  had  sung  the  verse  of  some  popular 
song,  every  one  joined  the  chorus.  And  it  was  at  one 
of  these  singsongs,  in  the  big  white-paneled  drawing-room, 


SUPREME  MISSION  207 

with  the  yellow  light  falling  on  many  faces  about  the  piano, 
that  I  had  a  glimpse  of  a  gray  hospital  ward  and  one  of 
those  tragic  commonplaces  that  make  up  the  life  of  a 
nurse  in  times  of  war. 

"  The  singer  had  been  singing  a  favorite  song  of  the 
British  Tommies  with  a  strong  cockney  accent: 

"  '  Oi  want  go  'ome, 

Oi  want  to  go  'ome, 

Now  that  Belgium  is  Belgium  again, 

Now  that  France  has  got  Alsace-Lorraine, 

Carry  me  over  the  sea, 

Where  the  Allymand  cannot  get  me, 

Oh  my,  I'm  too  young  to  die, 

I  want  to  go  'ome/ 

when  a  girl  near  me,  who  had  been  rather  silent,  spoke 
for  the  first  time: 

"  '  That  song  reminds  me  of  a  boy  I  used  to  have  in 
my  ward.  He  had  a  broken  back  and  it  was  just  a  ques- 
tion of  time,  but  he  didn't  know  that.  He  sang  that  song 
until  I  thought  I  couldn't  stand  it.? 

"  The  singing  was  still  to  be  heard  as  I  slipped  into  my 
coat  a  few  minutes  later  and  went  out  of  doors.  Down 
on  the  rocks  the  water  slipped  against  them  softly,  over- 
head were  a  million  stars  in  the  dark  sky. 

"  And  so,  war  —  hideous  and  relentless  —  intrudes 
even  on  the  peace  of  beautiful  places,  as  it  always  will  for 
most  of  us  as  long  as  we  live.  But  even  if  the  memories 
of  what  lay  behind  them  came  back  to  the  nurses  who  had 
their  leave  at  Cap  d'Antibes,  the  days  there  were  mostly 
happy  ones.  Nothing  that  the  Red  Cross  has  done  has 
been  more  worth  while  than  this  place  that  they  have  had 
for  the  nurses  who  needed  rest  and  recuperation.  There 
were  the  creature  comforts  of  hot  water,  good  food,  and 
soft  beds;  there  was  sunshine  after  an  eternity  of  rain; 
peace  after  war." 


CHAPTER  IX 

THE  KED   CROSS  1ST   THE  HOSPITALS  OF  THE  A.  E.   F. 

AT  no  time  was  it  either  the  object  or  the  ambition 
of  the  American  Red  Cross  to  build  or  equip  or  oper- 
ate all  the.  hospitals  of  the  United  States  Army  in  France. 
For  a  more  or  less  privately  organized  institution  to  have 
taken  upon  its  shoulders,  no  matter  how  broad  they  might 
be,  the  entire  hospitalization  of  an  army  of  more  than 
2,000,000  men  would  have  been  suicidal.  So  our  Red 
Cross  in  its  wisdom  did  not  even  make  the  attempt;  it 
was  quite  content  to  build  and  equip  hospitals  in  the  early 
days  before  the  American  Expeditionary  Forces  had  com- 
pleted their  organization  and  so  were  themselves  unable  to 
work  out  their  hospital  problem  as  they  were  forced  to  do  at 
a  later  time.  The  Red  Cross  did  more ;  it  conducted  hos- 
pitals during  the  entire  period  of  war  — •  as  you  have  just 
seen  —  and  attempted  to  make  these  models,  experiment 
stations,  if  you  please",  from  which  the  medical  experts  of 
the  army  might  derive  inspiration  and  real  assistance. 
But  at  no  time  did  it  seek  to  usurp  any  of  the  functions  of 
the  Surgeon-General's  office  of  the  army  —  on  the  contrary. 
"  When  the  army  was  ready  to  tackle  the  hospital  prob- 
lem in  fine  theory  we  should  have  gotten  out,"  Colonel 
Burlingame  told  me ;  "  but  we  did  not  We  were  follow- 
ing out  the  first  clause  of  our  creed,  which  was  to  meet 
emergency  whenever  or  wherever  it  arose  and  no  matter 
at  what  cost.  And  at  all  times  during  the  progress  of  the 
war  the  emergency  compelled  the  Red  Cross  to  at  least 
maintain  its  hospitals.  And  so  it  did,  with  a  total  capacity 
up  to  the  time  of  the  signing  of  the  armistice  of  some 
14,000  beds.  After  that  we  dropped  off  pretty  rapidly. 
Our  pay-roll  lists  of  personnel  show  that.  On  November 

208 


IN  THE  HOSPITALS  OF  THE  A.  E.  F.         209 

11,  1918,  these  contained  the  names  of  1,771  men  and 
women ;  by  the  first  of  the  following  March  this  total  had 
dropped  to  a  mere  2»70." 

So  it  was  that  upon  the  heels  of  the  first  established  Red 
Cross  hospitals  in  France  there  came  the  huge  hospitals  of 
the  United  States  Army  in  great  size  and  profusion. 
Sometimes  these  were  gathered  in  groups  —  as  at  Savenay 
or  Allerey  or  Dijon  or  around  about  Brest  or  Bordeaux  — 
and  at  other  times  they  stood  alone  and  at  comparatively 
isolated  points.  Even  these  last  were  sizable  institutions, 
huge  even  according  to  the  hospital  standards  of  our  larg- 
est metropolitan  cities  in  America ;  while,  when  you  came 
to  a  point  like  Savenay  —  halfway  between  Nantes  and 
St.  Nazaire —  you  beheld  a  group  of  seven  individual 
hospitals  which,  shortly  after  Armistice  Bay,  attained  a 
total  capacity  of  11,000  beds  and  were-  planned,  in  fact, 
for  some  9,000  more,  with  a  further  capacity  of  another 
10,000  feasible  and  remotely  planned.  Into  this  great 
group  of  institutions  there  came*  between  August,  1917, 
and  May,  1919,  some  85,000  wounded  American  boys. 
Its  maximum  staff  consisted  of  500  officers,  500  nurses, 
and  a  general  staff  of  4,000  enlisted  men. 

When  I  visited  the  place  —  at  the  end  of  April,  1919  — 
it  still  had  some  6,500  patients,  the  most  of  whom  were 
well  out  of  danger  and  were  enjoying  the  warm  sun- 
shine of  a  rarely  perfect  day  in  France  I  found  the 
headquarters  staff  ensconced  in  a  group  of  permanent  stone 
buildings  which,  in  the  days  before  the  war,  were  part  of 
a  normal  school  standing  alongside  the  highroad  to  Nantes. 
This,  itself,  formed  a  hospital  for  general  cases.  Some  of 
those  that  were  grouped  with  it  in  the  open  fields  around 
about  specialized  in  serious  bed  surgical  cases,  in  con- 
tagious diseases,  in  tuberculosis,  in  mental  cases.  This 
last  had  handled  7,500  cases  in  the  progress-  of  the  war. 

In  each  of  these  hospitals  —  as  in  each  and  every  one 
of  the  United  States  Army  hospitals  in  France  and  the 


210  WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

occupied  areas  of  Germany  —  the  Red  Cross  functioned. 
At  Savenay  it  had  not  only  erected  recreation  huts  for  the 
men  of  each  of  the  individual  hospitals,  but  a  huge  audi- 
torium or  amusement  hall,  permanently  fabricated  of  brick 
and  steel  and  glass,  equipped  with  a  complete  theater 
stage,  and  capable  of  seating  between  1,500  and  2,000 
doughboys  and  their  officers.  This  super-playhouse  was 
in  use  every  night  of  the  week  —  for  cinema,  for  drama, 
sung  or  spoken,  for  dances,  and,  from  time  to  time,  for 
meetings  and  for  religious  services. 

To  this  entertainment  phase  of  the  American  Red  Cross 
in  the  hospitals  we  shall  presently  return.  For  the  mo- 
ment I  shall  ask  you  to  consider  the  part  it  played  in  the 
essential  job  of  supplying  hospital  supplies.  It  was  not, 
of  course,  either  practicable  or  possible  for  our  Red  Cross 
to  supply  all  of  these  —  or  even  any  tremendously  large 
part  of  them.  But  it  could  —  and  did  —  supply  goodly 
quantities  of  all  of  them  when  they  were  most  needed, 
and  so  worth  ten  times  their  value  and  quantity  at  any 
other  time. 

Time  and  time  again  it  furnished  materials,  both  for 
their  regular  and  for  their  emergency  necessities.  Some- 
times the  army  itself  did  not  function  properly  —  there 
were  instances  of  red  tape  disgraceful  and  some,  too,  of  red 
tape  inevitable.  And  yet  there  were  other  times  when  all 
the  tape  cutters  in  the  world  could  not  have  saved  the  situ- 
ation, but  the  American  Red  Cross,  with  its  emergency 
warehouses  and  its  well-organized  transportation  system 
all  the  way  across  the  face  of  France,  did  save  it.  A  truck- 
load,  two,  three;  perhaps  even  four  or  five  truckloads  of 
beds  or  bedding  —  perhaps  even  a  small  camionette  filled 
to  the  brim  with  dressings  and  drugs  or  surgical  instru- 
ments could,  and  did,  save  precious  lives  —  by  the  dozens 
and  by  the  hundreds.  Do  you  remember,  in  the  preceding 
chapter,  the  several  instances  where  our  Red  Cross  played 
its  part  —  and  no  small  part  at  that  —  in  the  winning  of 


IN  THE  HOSPITALS  OF  THE  A.  E.  F.         211 

the  big  fight  at  Chateau-Thierry  ?  Those  were  not  unusual 
instances;  they  were  fairly  typical. 

There  came  one  day  when  the  commanding  officers  of 
the  U.  S.  A.  hospital  center  at  Allerey  —  one  of  the  larg- 
est in  all  France  —  sent  for  Captain  James  C.  Ramage, 
the  American  Red  Cross  representative  in  the  district.  He 
told  the  Red  Cross  man  that  a  tremendous  convoy  of 
wounded  soldiers  from  the  Soissons-Rheims  district  was 
expected  within  a  few  days  and  asked  his  help  in  securing 
a  real  bulk  of  medical  supplies.  Those  were  the  days  when 
the  Surgeon  General's  department  of  the  army  was  not 
always  able  to  furnish  even  drugs  and  dressings  when  they 
were  most  needed. 

Ramage  lost  no  time  in  discussing  the  thing.  He  said 
that  he  would  do  his  best  and  caught  the  first  train  into 
Paris ;  spent  several  days  there  in  getting  together  the  nec- 
essary supplies,  personally  supervised  the  loading  of  them 
into  a  freight  car,  and  then  performed  the  unheard-of  feat 
of  inducing  the  French  railway  authorities  to  attach  the 
freight  car  to  a  fast  passenger  train  bound  down  to  Dijon. 
Camions  were  rushed  from  Allerey  to  Dijon,  and  two  days 
later  the  necessary  supplies  were  all  at  the  hospital  center 
—  and  well  in  advance  of  the  coming  of  the  wounded 
soldiers.  On  another  night  in  that  same  summer  of  1918, 
some  2,250  wounded  Americans  poured  into  that  selfsame 
army  hospital  center  of  Allerey.  The  hospital  ware- 
houses were  exhausted.  The  Red  Cross's  were  not;  do 
you  remember  what  we  said  at  the  beginning  —  that  the 
fullness  of  its  job  lay  in  its  being  forever  ready  to  meet  any 
emergency  which  might  arise  ? 

It  was  being  ready  that  made  it  able  that  hot  August 
night  to  turn  into  the  crowded  hospital  in  a  space  of  time 
to  be  measured  in  minutes  rather  than  in  hours,  10,000 
blankets,  10,000  sheets,  8,000  towels,  8,000  pairs  of  pa- 
jamas, 2,000  yards  of  Dakin  tubing,  1,000  operating  gowns, 
1,000  helmets,  and  two  whole  carloads  of  surgical  dressings. 

Emergency  work!     How  it  always  does  count! 


212  WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

The  securing  of  these  supplies  in  the  beginning  was, 
of  itself,  a  master  problem.  It  involved  not  alone  pur- 
chase but  manufacturing  —  manufacturing  upon  a  really 
enormous  scale.  We  saw  at  the  beginnings  of  the  Red 
Cross  work  in  France  the  various  workrooms  in  Paris 
which  devoted  themselves  to  the  making  of  dressings  — 
of  one  sort  or  another  and  in  tremendous  quantities.  Yet 
the  actual  beginnings  of  this  work  antedated  even  the 
establishment  of  the  Paris  workrooms ;  immediately  on  the 
outbreak  of  the  European  War,  a  special  department  was 
established  at  the  National  Headquarters  of  the  American 
Red  Cross  in  Washington  for  giving  advice  concerning  hos- 
pital garments  and  supplies  for  European  relief  and  fur- 
nishing patterns  and  samples  for  the  same.  A  New  York 
City  committee,  organized  for  the  same  purpose  by  Mrs. 
Mary  Hatch  Willard,  began  the  sending  of  old  linens 
to  French  hospitals.  This  work  grew  into  a  unit  known 
as  the  Surgical  Dressings  Committee  of  the  United  States, 
for  the  making  of  dressings  by  volunteers  in  this  country, 
and  finally  led  to  the  establishment  of  the  first  of  the  Paris 
workrooms.  By  the  time  that  Pershing  had  first  arrived  in 
France  this  work  in  America  had  grown  to  a  point  where  it 
employed  more  than  two  thousand  committees  and  subcom- 
mittees. Its  output  increased  so  rapidly  that  in  the  week 
ending  August  27,  1917,  ninety-two  hospitals  were  sup- 
plied and  155,261  dressings  were  made  in  the  Paris  work- 
room alone.  And  that,  of  course,  was  long  before  there 
were  any  American  wounded.  In  the  summer  of  1917  the 
National  Surgical  Dressings  Committee  entered  into  co- 
operation with  the  American  Red  Cross  and  from  that  date 
its  efficient  distribution  service  in  France  became  the  Sur- 
gical Dressings  Service  Department  of  the  American  Red 
Cross. 

Then  came  the  imminent  necessity  of  standardizing  these 
surgical  dressings  —  which  was  accomplished  by  a  special 
board  which  Pershing  appointed  at  the  end  of  August, 
1917.  Its  standards  were  followed,  but  its  energies  only 


IN  THE  HOSPITALS  OF  THE  A.  E.  F.          213 

dimmed  at  the  time  when  it  was  actually  seen  that  they 
were  quite  exceeding  the  necessities  of  the  situation.  And 
the  volume  of  those  selfsame  energies  is  perhaps  the  better 
understood  when  it  is  realized  that  from  October,  1917, 
to  January  22,  1919,  147,230,777  cases  of  surgical  dress- 
ings alone,  both  donated  and  manufactured,  were  received 
at  the  Red  Cross  warehouses  in  Paris. 

Splints,  of  which  an  immense  number  were  necessary 
even  for  the  very  short  period  in  which  we  were  actually 
engaged  in  the  conduct  of  the  war,  formed  a  real  Red  Cross 
specialty.  Our  army  hospitals  were  entirely  dependent 
upon  the  American  Red  Cross  for  these  necessities  —  the 
total  orders  for  which  in  July  and  August  of  1918,  totaled 
some  15,000  to  20,000  weekly.  For  that  entire  year  the 
output  was  94,583  splints,  the  factories  often  working  from 
eighteen  to  twenty  hours  a  day  to  keep  pace  with  the  requi- 
sitions upon  them.  Our  Red  Cross  also  supplied  all  the 
nitrous  oxide  used  in  American  hospitals  of  every  type  in 
France.  The  use  of  this  ultra-modern  anesthetic,  to  the 
increasing  exclusion  of  ether  and  of  chloroform,  forms  one 
of  the  fascinating  chapters  of  the  medical  conduct  of  the 
war.  Although  it  had  been  employed  as  an  anesthetic  in 
the  United  States  for  a  number  of  years  before  the  begin- 
ning of  the  war,  its  first  use  in  Europe  was  when  Colonel 
George  W.  Crile  —  the  distinguished  surgeon  from  Cleve- 
land, Ohio  —  introduced  it  into  operations  in  the  then 
American  Ambulance  Hospital  at  Neuilly  —  afterward 
the  American  Red  Cross  Military  Hospital  Number  One. 
That  was  in  1915.  Nitrous  oxide  as  an  anaesthetic  imme- 
diately attracted  the  attention  of  a  number  of  eminent 
British  surgeons. 

"  It  is  good,"  said  Colonel  Crile,  tersely. 

And  so  it  is  —  good.  It  is  so  good  that  Colonel  Alexan- 
der Lambert,  at  that  time  chief  surgeon  of  our  American 
Red  Cross,  immediately  made  it  the  standard  anaesthetic  of 
its  medical  service.  For,  like  so  many  other  American  sur- 
geons, he  quickly  concurred  in  the  opinion  that  nitrous 


214:     WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

acid,  used  in  combination  with  oxygen,  three  parts  to  one, 
is  the  least  dangerous  as  well  as  the  best  adapted  for  use 
when  operating  upon  cases  of  chest  surgery,  abdomen 
wounds,  or  of  shock.  Under  this  anaesthetic  the  percentage 
of  recovery  is  seventy-two  per  cent,  as  compared  with 
fifty  per  cent  for  either  chloroform  or  ether.  More- 
over, it  has  none  of  the  disagreeable  after  effects  which 
come  almost  invariably  with  the  use  of  chloroform  or  ether. 
To  quote  Colonel  Lambert: 

"  The  use  of  nitrous-oxide  anaesthetic  to  the  exclusion 
of  ether  or  chloroform  in  case  of  at  least  the  seriously 
wounded  seems  to  me  not  only  advisable  but  beyond  the 
advisability  of  discussion." 

Its  official  use,  therefore,  was  predicated.  It  was  first 
supplied  to  the  casualty-clearing  stations;  American  and 
British  cooperating  for  the  sake  of  an  exchange  of  ideas 
as  to  its  best  use.  Our  Red  Cross  supplied  an  apparatus 
of  special  design  that  had  gradually  been  evolved  from  those 
already  devised.  This  allowed  the  separate  administration 
of  the  nitrous  oxide,  of  oxygen,  or  of  ether  —  which  at 
times  was  used  in  small  quantities  —  or  of  the  three  in 
various  combinations.  And  all  our  American  nurses 
were  trained  as  anaesthetists  in  its  use. 

The  making  of  the  nitrous-oxide  gas  itself  was  one  of 
many  similar  tasks  assigned  to  the  Manufacturing  De- 
partment of  our  Eed  Cross,  of  which  Major  Arthur  W. 
Kelly  was  department  chief.  He  ordered  a  huge  gas- 
making  plant  from  America  which,  after  some  considerable 
delay,  finally  was  set  up  at  Montreau,  fifty  miles  distant 
from  Paris.  In  the  meantime  the  Red  Cross  had  dis- 
covered a  man  in  the  French  Army  who  had  had  some 
experience  in  the  making  of  nitrous  oxide.  He  was  re- 
leased from  active  army  service  and  at  once  started  to 
work  making  an  emergency  supply,  the  limited  quantities 
carried  to  France  by  Colonel  Crile  having  become  com- 
pletely exhausted.  This  small  plant  had  a  daily  capacity 


IN  THE  HOSPITALS  OF  THE  A.  E.  F.          215 

of  about  4,000  gallons.  But  when  the  bigger  machinery 
from  America  had  finally  been  set  up  —  in  the  midsum- 
mer of  1918  —  this  output  was  increased  to  75,000  gallons 
a  day.  This  could  easily  have  been  doubled,  had  it  not 
been  for  a  single  limiting  factor  —  the  extreme  difficulty 
of  securing  3,280  gallon  cans  in  which  the  gas  was  trans- 
ported. Finally  the  Red  Cross  secured  some  hydrogen 
tanks  that  had  been  captured  from  the  Germans  in  their 
first  July  defeats.  It  was  then  and  not  until  then  that 
the  nitrous-oxide  plant  began  running  at  anything  like 
its  real  capacity.  And  with  the  definite  result  that  from 
September,  1917,  to  October  23,  1918,  our  Red  Cross  was 
able  to  supply  our  army  with  699,420  gallons  of  this 
precious  anaesthetic,  its  own  hospitals  with  405,620  gal- 
lons, and  some  miscellaneous  institutions  with  an  addi- 
tional 251,110  gallons,  while  it  saw  Great  Britain  for- 
mally acknowledge  nitrous  oxide  as  an  anesthetic  par 
excellence  and  even  conservative  France  making  the  first 
steps  toward  its  adoption. 

A  few  of  the  medical  and  surgical  requisitions  of  a 
typical  American  Army  Division  —  the  Second  • —  upon 
our  Red  Cross  -are  before  me  as  I  write.  They  are  indica- 
tive of  the  overwhelming  demands  that  were  made  upon  it, 
not  only  from  every  corner  of  the  front,  but  from  every 
corner  of  France  that  was  occupied  by  our  fighting  men  — 
and  what  corner  was  not  ? 

It  was  at  the  request  of  the  chief  surgeon  of  this  Division 
that  one  of  its  field  hospitals  —  originally  supplied  direct 
from  the  army's  own  sources  of  supply  —  was  amplified 
by  the  American  Red  Cross,  by  the  use  of  Bessoneau  tents 
and  other  equipment  so  as  to  become  practically  a  mobile 
unit,  capable  of  handling  far  heavier  cases.  The  supply- 
ing of  the  equipment  shown  by  these  requisitions  began 
while  the  division  was  still  in  the  vicinity  of  Montdidier 
and  continued  until  after  it  had  moved  to  Meaux  and  was 
in  active  preparation  for  its  great  role  at  Chateau-Thierry. 


216  WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

In  addition  to  the  Bessoneau  tents,  the  following  were  the 
requisitions  which  were  delivered  to  this  single  formation 
while  it  was  under  heavy  pressure: 

June  1 :    1  tortoise  tent  and  100  collapsible  cots. 

June  8:  12  antitoxin  syringes  for  anti-tetanus  serum,  200 
packages  of  absorbent  cotton,  30  feet  of  glass  tubing,  and 
25  operating  gowns  and  caps. 

June  4-  250  single  blankets,  100  litters,  5,000  anti -tetanus 
serum,  2  autoclaves,  4  thermometers  for  autoclaves,  50 
wash  cloths,  1,000  pairs  of  socks,  50  towels,  and  200  com- 
fort kits. 

June  6:  50  clinical  thermometers,  2,000  temperature  charts, 
1  gallon  of  green  soap,  36  bottles  of  ammonia,  5,000  Greeley 
units,  20  syringes,  15  liters  of  Lysol,  20  chart  holders,  100 
rubber  sheets,  2  small  instrument  sterilizers,  500  night- 
shirts, 500  blankets,  1,000  sheets,  500  forks  and  spoons,  100 
bedside  tables,  100  folding  chairs,  50  hot-water  bottles,  36 
maps,  50  hand  basins,  20  bolts  of  gauze,  10  bolts  of  muslin, 
100  beds,  and  100  mattresses. 

June  7:  200  litters,  250  blankets,  100  rolls  of  cotton,  200 
rolls  of  gauze,  144  rubber  gloves,  100  operating  gowns  and 
caps,  96  tubes  of  catgut,  500  Carrel  pads,  100  gowns  for 
nurses,  20  sterile  water  containers,  5,000  folded  gauze  com- 
presses, and  5,000  small  sponges. 

I  rather  feel  that  this  record  of  a  single  week  of  the 
demands  of  one  Division  upon  our  Red  Cross  will  show 
quite  enough  the  burden  which  it  was  forced  to  bear ;  and 
bore  most  joyously  as  a  part  of  the  opportunity  for  serv- 
ice which  was  given  unto  it  in  France.  In  a  single  day 
and  night  during  that  same  great  offensive  of  1918,  128 
different  requisitions  —  each  comprising  from  one  to  fifty 
items  —  were  started  out  on  the  road  from  Paris ;  while 
on  the  twentieth  of  August  of  that  same  summer  —  the 
day  which  marked  the  beginning  of  the  St.  Mihiel  drive  — 
120,000  front-line  emergency  parcels  and  more  than  fifteen 
carloads  of  surgical  dressings  were  shipped  to  the  scene  of 
activity.  From  the  Paris  headquarters  of  the  Red  Cross 
alone,  supplies  were  shipped  that  summer  to  sixty-six 
base  hospitals,  two  naval-base  hospitals,  fifty-four  camp 


IN  THE  HOSPITALS  OF  THE  A.  E.  F.          217 

hospitals,  twenty-one  convalescent  hospitals,  twenty  army 
divisions,  seven  evacuation  hospitals,  nine  field  hospitals, 
eight  hospital  centers,  nine  mobile  hospitals,  six  medical 
supply  depots,  and  the  central  medical  department  labora- 
tory —  all  of  the  United  States  Army  in  France.  This 
great  record  does  not,  of  course,  include  the  supplies  sent 
to  the  Red  Cross's  own  hospitals  or  those  sent  to  the 
A.  E.  F.  hospitals  from  the  nine  zone  headquarters  of  the 
American  Red  Cross ;  nor  even  emergency  supplies  sent  to 
eighteen  detached  American  Army  units,  far  away  from 
their  bases  of  supplies.  In  a  single  month  and  from  one 
warehouse,  our  Red  Cross  made  the  following  shipments  to 
formations  operated  entirely  by  our  army:  77,101  surgical 
instruments,  2,820  beds  and  cots,  24,733,126  surgical  dress- 
ings, and  15,300  pounds  of  drugs. 

It  also  supplied  specialties,  and  all  for  the  comfort  of 
our  wounded  boys  over  there.  Take  ice  —  that  simple 
product  of  our  modern  civilization  —  so  indispensable  to 
the  American.  It  is  second  nature  with  us  to-day  and 
yet  little  used  by  the  French.  Ice  is  as  much  an  essential 
to  our  up-to-date  hospitals  as  drugs  or  nurses  or  the  beds 
themselves.  Properly  packed,  it  cools  the  fever  and  so 
greatly  eases  the  sufferings  of  wounded  men  as  they  toss 
upon  their  cots.  Its  beverage  use  is  too  universal  to  even 
need  comment  here. 

"  My,  that's  good !  "  more  than  one  sick  boy  murmured, 
as  the  nurse  held  a  spoonful  of  it  to  his  hot  lips.  "  It's 
just  like  home." 

Yet,  while  our  government  planned  ice-making  machin- 
ery for  each  of  its  hospitals,  large  or  small,  they  were  not 
always  ready  as  quickly  as  the  rest  of  the  plant.  There 
again  our  Red  Cross  stepped  into  the  breach,  supplying 
small  portable  ice-making  plants  not  only  to  the  field 
hospitals  for  which  they  were  originally  designed,  but 
even  for  larger  installations.  Each  of  these  portable 
plants  consisted  of  a  gasoline  engine  of  fifteen  horse  power, 
water-cooled  and  attached  to  a  compressor,  which  in  turn 


218  WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

was  connected  to  the  water  piping  in  the  brine  tanks.  The 
capacity  of  each  of  these  was  about  two  tons  and  a  half 
each  twenty-four  hours.  And  each  was  accompanied  by 
two  Ford  camionettes  —  builded  with  special  ice  boxes  — 
to  carry  its  product  to  the  wards  roundabout. 

Second  only  to  ice  in  importance  as  a  hospital  auxiliary 
was  light.  In  the  early  years  of  the  war,  the  surgeons  of 
the  allied  nations  worked  under  great  difficulties  at  night 
and  undoubtedly  many  lives  were  sacrificed  because  of 
the  lack  of  proper  lighting  facilities.  I  have  heard  of  the 
doctors  ripping  off  a  wounded  man's  clothing  by  the  light 
of  one  star  shell  and  waiting  for  the  next  to  give  them 
enough  brilliancy  to  examine  his  injuries. 

For  at  least  ten  or  a  dozen  years  past  our  larger  Ameri- 
can circuses  have  used  portable  electric-lighting  plants  on 
their  various  itinerant  trips  across  the  land  —  with  a  fair 
degree  of  success.  Those  circuses  gave  our  Eed  Cross  in 
France  an  inspiration.  Lieutenant  Harry  C.  Hand,  a 
director  in  its  Central  Department  of  Requirements,  in 
studying  the  markets  for  the  proper  sort  of  equipment, 
used  them  as  models  and  so  evolved,  as  a  plant  most 
practical  for  Red  Cross  needs,  a  three-and-a-half  kilowatt 
outfit  consisting  of  a  gasoline  engine,  an  electric  generator, 
and  a  switchboard.  This  outfit,  mounted  upon  a  stout 
camion,  would  light  135  incandescent  lamps  of  twenty-five 
watts  each.  On  its  travels  it  carried  in  its  lockers  the 
lamps,  extension  cords,  sockets,  and  the  like  to  make  them 
available  for  almost  instant  service.  And  the  Red  Cross 
in  the  heart  of  the  war  emergency  had  five  of  these  outfits 
at  its  service  in  France. 

One  other  allied  factor  in  this  hospital  supply  service 
deserves  attention  before  we  finally  turn  away  from  it.  I 
have  referred  from  time  to  time  to  the  vast  quantities  of 
drugs  which  our  Red  Cross  distributed  to  both  its  own  and 
other  hospital  centers.  It  was  obvious  that  this  distribu- 
tion had  to  be  centralized,  and  because  of  the  delicate 


IN  THE  HOSPITALS  OF  THE  A.  E.  F.          219 

and  extremely  valuable  nature  of  this  particular  form 
of  supplies  be  kept  quite  separate  and  distinct  from 
the  others.  So  "  The  Red  Cross  Pharmacy/'  as  it 
was  generally  called,  came  into  existence,  at  a  former 
apartment  building  at  No.  10  Rue  de  Tilsitt,  Paris,  and 
quickly  came  to  such  importance  that  it  was  made  the 
headquarters  of  the  Section  of  Hospital  Supplies,  which 
in  turn  was  a  division  of  the  larger  Bureau  of  Hospital 
Administration. 

Throughout  all  of  the  hard  months  of  the  war  this  sec- 
tion boasted  that  each  night  found  the  requisitions  for  that 
day  filled.  There  were  no  left-overs;  not  even  when  a 
single  day's  work  meant  fifty-six  huge  orders  entirely  com- 
pleted, and  little  rest  for  a  staff  which  averaged  forty-one 
men  and  women. 

The  pharmacy  was  well  systematized.  In  its  basement 
were  the  receiving,  the  packing,  and  the  shipping  depart- 
ments, while  upon  its  broad  main  floor  the  drugs  and  anti- 
septics were  actually  stored,  the  second  floor  being  given 
to  dental  supplies,  surgical  instruments,  rubber  goods, 
sutures,  serums,  laboratory  equipment,  and  the  like.  Each 
of  these  various  departments  was  in  charge  of  a  specialist, 
a  man  of  many  years'  experience  in  the  line  which  he 
headed. 

By  June,  1918,  the  pharmacy  in  the  Rue  de  Tilsitt  had 
become  of  such  importance  that  it  was  re-created  into  a 
Section  of  Supplies,  with  Major  George  L.  Burroughs,  of 
the  Massachusetts  College  of  Pharmacy  in  Boston,  as  its 
sectional  chief.  Within  a  month  he  had  found  the  demands 
upon  his  department  so  much  increased  that  he  was  forced 
in  turn  to  increase  its  facilities  —  by  the  addition  of  two 
warehouses.  In  another  six  weeks  a  new  burden  was 
placed  upon  his  shoulders  —  the  distribution  of  all  alcohol, 
ether,  oxygen,  and  nitrous  acid  issued  by  our  Red  Cross, 
which  meant,  of  course,  more  space  needed  —  so  the  un- 
used powder  magazine  at  Fort  D'lvry  and  the  riding  acad- 
emy at  No.  12  Rue  Duphot  —  both  loaned  by  the  French 


220  WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

Government  authorities  —  were  added  to  the  quarters  of 
the  pharmacy. 

Some  idea  of  the  amount  of  work  undertaken  and  ac- 
complished by  this  Red  Cross  pharmacy  may  be  gained 
when  it  is  understood  that  in  the  six  months  ending  Jan- 
uary, 1919,  75,016  pounds  of  drugs  were  issued  from  it. 
There  were  in  that  time  3,954,178  tablets,  21,566  phials  of 
serum,  271  surgical  units,  15,108  pairs  of  rubber  gloves, 
and  22,059  feet  of  adhesive  plaster,  in  addition  to  many 
hundreds  of  packets  of  other  drug  supplies. 

Seemingly  we  have  drifted  away  from  our  American 
boys,  sick  or  wounded  and  in  hospitals.  In  reality,  of 
course,  we  have  not  Every  one  of  these  provisions,  large 
or  small,  was  aimed  directly  at  their  comfort,  while  each 
deserved  to  be  rated  as  a  necessity  rather  than  comfort  — 
comfort,  at  least,  as  the  average  luxury-loving  American 
knows  it.  It  was  comfort  rather  than  luxury  that  I  found 
our  boys  enjoying  there  at  Savenay  —  long,  comfortable 
huts,  builded  hurriedly  but  furnished  with  great  care, 
great  taste,  and  great  atrractiveness.  Savenay,  itself,  was 
a  good  deal  of  a  mud-hole,  a  fearfully  wretched  place  un- 
derfoot. The  Eed  Cross  huts  shone  brilliantly  in  contrast. 
Here,  as  in  the  canteens  all  over  France,  the  boys  might 
congregate  —  practically  at  all  hours  —  and  amuse  them- 
selves as  their  fancies  dictated;  or,  if  fancy  grew  a  bit 
bored,  it  was  part  of  the  job  of  the  directress  —  one  of 
whose  essential  qualifications  was  resourcefulness  and  an- 
other versatility  —  to  find  some  new  form  of  amusement. 
It  was  not  enough  to  hand  out  the  cigarettes  —  one  or  two 
packs  a  week  —  or  the  pipes  and  the  playing  cards  and  the 
tobacco,  pretty  much  as  requested  —  there  had  to  be  shows. 
The  American  passion  for  play-acting  is  something  to  be 
reckoned  with. 

Perhaps  you  do  not  quickly  understand  how  versatile 
those  very  shows  might  readily  become.  Let  me  quote 
from  Toot  Sweet  —  the  little  fortnightly  newspaper  which 


* 


C     . 


« 


IN  THE  HOSPITALS  OF  THE  A.  E.  F.         221 

our  American  Red  Cross  printed  for  the  boys  convalescing 
there  at  Savenay.  That  is,  the  Red  Cross  furnished  the 
printing  press,  the  type,  and  the  rest  of  the  paraphernalia 
for  the  making  of  the  publication ;  the  boys,  themselves, 
supplied  the  brains  that  made  it  so  very  readable  at  all 
times. 

"  '  Stunt  Night/  advertised  in  Base  69  Hut  for  March 
13,  brought  a  lot  of  inquiries,"  says  Toot  Sweet,  in  its 
issue  dated  April  1,  1919.  "  '  Whadaye  mean  —  stunts  ? ' 
Probably  the  announcement  of  pies  and  doughnuts  for 
prizes  was  responsible  for  the  crowd  that  appeared  that 
evening  when  a  large  part  of  the  floor  space  was  cleared 
and  a  couple  of  Red  Cross  hut  workers  started  the  stunts. 
The  first  stunt  —  with  a  large  slice  of  apple  pie  as  prizes 
-  was  to  sit  upon  a  piece  of  iron  pipe,  diameter  six  inches, 
place  the  heel  of  one  shoe  on  the  toe  of  another,  and  while 
thus  insecurely  balanced,  light  in  one  hand  from  a  lighted 
candle  in  the  other  a  cigarette.  Shrieks  and  howls  from 
the  delighted  mob  who  began  betting  on  results  encouraged 
a  number  of  aspirants  and  the  pie  was  finally  won.  Stunt 
after  stunt  followed  in  quick  succession,  all  sorts  of  queer 
and  absurd  contortions  varying  from  picking  up  folded 
newspaper  from  the  floor  with  your  teeth  while  holding 
one  foot  in  the  air  with  one  hand  to  a  ( puttee  race,'  when 
the  contestants  raced  from  one  end  of  the  hall,  took  off  their 
puttees,  and  then  put  them  on  again,  then  raced  back,  with 
various  obstacles  in  the  way.  Finally  the  boys  began 
challenging  each  other  to  their  favorite  stunts,  so  that  Pri- 
vate California  might  have  been  showing  Private  North 
Carolina  a  pet  trick,  while  Sergeant  Oklahoma  and  Cor- 
poral Louisiana  gravely  discussed  the  merits  of  their  ideas 
on  stunts.  The  winning  team  was  presented  with  a  large, 
juicy  apple  pie,  vamped  from  the  mess  sergeant  by  a  Red 
Cross  girl. 

"  (  Aonateur  night '  was  announced  for  the  same  hut 
two  nights  later  by  a  stunning  poster  done  in  colors  by  one 
of  the  309th  Engineers.  A  box  of  homemade  fudge  was 


222     WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

the  prize  for  the  best  act.  Seven  of  the  best  vaudeville 
acts  ever  seen  in  the  huts  appeared.  The  sergeant  major 
of  Base  Hospital  Number  69  was  the  master  of  ceremonies. 
A  l  dummy '  act,  a  i  wop  mechanic '  in  song  and  mono- 
logue, a  ballad  singer,  a  '  song  and  minstrel  man/  a  man- 
dolin and  guitar  player,  who  gave  remarkable  imitations 
of  Hawaiian  instruments,  a  '  tramp  monologuist/  and  a 
clog  dancer  composed  the  bill.  Harry  Henly,  the  '  song 
and  minstrel  man/  won  the  box  of  fudge  which  was  dis- 
played in  all  its  glory  and  pink  ribbons  during  the  contest." 
Sometimes  there  was  not  quite  so  much  fun  in  the  situa- 
tion. The  girls  who  ran  the  Red  Cross  hut  in  the  tuber- 
culosis hospital  of  the  Savenay  group,  almost  directly 
across  the  highroad  from  Number  69,  had  a  far  weightier 
problem  upon  their  shoulders.  To  amuse  there,  was  a 
vastly  more  difficult  task.  For  they  knew  —  as  most  of 
its  patients  knew  —  that  the  man  who  entered  the  portals 
of  that  particular  hospital  was  foredoomed.  If  he  had  a 
fighting  chance  of  conquering  the  "  T.  B."  he  was  packed 
into  the  hospital  ward  of  a  transport  and  rushed  home.  If 
he  did  not  have  that  fighting  chance  —  well,  why  waste 
precious  transport  space?  To  Savenay  with  him.  And 
to  Savenay  he  went  to  spend  his  days  —  and  end  them  — 
in  a  cheery,  camplike  place  where  there  were  croquet  and 
less  strenuous  games  and  broad  piazzas  that  looked  down 
across  the  valley  toward  the  embrochure  of  the  Loire,  while 
Red  Cross  girls  came  and  went  and  did  their  womanly 
best  to  comfort  and  amuse  a  fellow  —  and  make  him  for- 
get ;  forget  the  back  door  of  the  little  hospital  where,  night 
after  night,  four  or  five  fellows  went  out  —  in  pine  boxes, 
never  to  return,  and  the  rows  of  wooden  crosses  down  in 
the  American  cemetery  at  the  foot  of  the  hill  steadily  grew. 

Turn  back  with  me,  if  you  will,  inland  from  Savenay 
to  the  curved  streets  of  Vichy  —  little  Vichy  situated  in 
the  very  foothills  of  the  high  Alps.  It  is  January  now, 
not  April.  We  have  turned  backward  in  full  earnest,  and 


IN  THE  HOSPITALS  OF  THE  A.  E.  F.          223 

are  breathing  the  air  of  those  hard  weeks  and  months  lhat 
followed  immediately  upon  the  signing  of  the  armistice. 

Vichy,  in  its  very  compactness,  with  the  flat  yellows  of 
its  curious  old  buildings  and  its  equally  curious  modern 
hotels,  with  the  fifteenth-century  tower  in  the  background 
and  the  quiet  Eiver  Allier  slipping  by,  has  the  fascinating 
unreality  of  a  stage  setting  —  one  of  those  marvelous  ef- 
fects with  which  the  genius  of  a  Belasco  or  a  Joseph  Urban 
from  time  to  time  delights  in  dazzling  us.  In  spring  or  in 
summer  we  might  find  it  prepared  for  carnival  —  with 
green'-painted  chairs  and  tables  underneath  the  still 
greener  foliage  of  its  small  park.  But  this  is  January  and 
the  park  is  deeply  blanketed  in  snow.  In  such  a  serene 
midwinter  setting  it  seems  far  more  ready  for  silent  drama 
than  for  the  blare  of  carnival  —  the  figures  in  olive  drab 
are  indeed  quite  the  figures  of  pantomime  —  brown  against 
the  whiteness  of  the  snow.  The  only  touches  of  color  in 
the  picture  —  tiny  splotches  of  green  or  blue  or  purple  or 
yellow  —  are  supplied  by  the  tiny  cloth  bags  that  the  men 
carry  with  them.  They  are  preparing  to  entrain  —  the 
first  step  of  many  on  the  way  back  to  the  homeland  —  and 
the  vari-colored  bags,  each  marked  with  a  crimson  cross, 
are  the  comfort  kits  they  genuinely  cherish. 

Before  war  was  come  upon  Prance,  Vichy  was  a  resort 
to  be  reckoned  with  in  the  comings  and  goings  of  her  elect. 
It  was  a  watering  place  —  and  much  more  besides.  There 
men  and  women  ate  as  well  as  drank,  bands  played,  beau- 
ties intrigued,  wheels,  flat-set,  spun  merrily,  and  entire 
fortunes  were  flicked  away  at  the  gaming  tables;  but  war 
changed  these  things  —  as  many,  many  others.  It  took 
the  viciousness  out  of  Vichy  and  brought  back  to  it  all  of 
the  gentleness  which  it  must  have  possessed  in  the  begin- 
ning. The  small  city,  where  formerly  the  ill  and  the 
bored  made  pilgrimages  in  search  of  health  (health  bub- 
bling up  to  the  lips  in  the  faint  concealments  of  a  glass  of 
sparkling  water),  became  a  city  of  wounded;  all  too  often 
a  city  of  death. 


224:     WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

The  French  Army  moved  in ;  and,  commandeering  hotel 
after  hotel,  transformed  them  into  its  hospitals.  On  its 
heels  came  the  American  Army;  it  alone  took  more  than 
eighty  hotels  for  its  own  hospital  purposes.  That  was  the 
signal  that  our  Red  Cross  would  be  needed,  and  without 
further  urge  it  moved  in.  Wherefore  the  comfort  bags  in 
the  hands  of  the  doughboys  as  they  moved  across  the  park 
toward  their  waiting  trains. 

If  memories  were  half  as  tangible  things  as  war  "  sou- 
venirs/' those  tiny  bags  of  the  crimson  cross  would  have 
held  other  things  than  soap  and  razor  blades  and  tooth  paste 
and  playing  cards  and  tobacco  and  the  like.  They  would 
have  held  definite  memories  of  Vichy  and  all  that  it  had 
meant  to  the  wounded  men  of  our  a-rmy.  Some  of  them 
would  have  carried  the  pictures  of  lights  shining  out 
through  opened  doors  into  the  darkness  of  the  night  and 
litters  coming  in  through  those  opened  doors  —  litters 
bearing  American  men,  when  they  were  not  American 
boys — -men  clad  only  in  hospital  robes,  but  whose  first 
bandages  were  drenched  with  blood  and  spattered  with  the 
mud  of  ~No  Man's  Land.  There  would  have  been  a  mul- 
tiplicity of  pictures  of  this  sort,  for  Vichy  in  the  days  of 
actual  fighting  never  was  an  idle  place.  There  were  times 
there  when,  within  a  cycle  of  twenty-four  hours,  as  many 
as  six  thousand  men  would  be  sent  away  from  it  —  to  make 
room  for  an  equal  number  of  incoming  freshly  wounded 
soldiers.  In  the  early  days  of  November  that  many  came 
to  it  direct  from  the  dressing  stations,  and  the  problem  of 
our  Red  Cross  there  became  a  little  bit  more  complex. 

There  might  also  have  been  pictures  in  those  selfsame 
comfort  bags  of  the  Red  Cross  girls  on  the  stone  platforms 
of  the  railroad  station  —  young  women  who  in  warm  days 
served  iced  lemonade  there  and  in  cold,  hot  chocolate,  or, 
when  it  was  requested,  hot  lemonade ;  for  the  fact  remains 
that  lemonade  was  the  only  food  or  drink  that  many  of  the 
gassed  cases  could  endure.  And  it  was  ready  for  them 
there  —  at  all  hours  of  the  day  or  night,  and  at  all  days ; 


IN  THE  HOSPITALS  OF  THE  A.  E.  F.         225 

even  though  to  make  that  possible  the  girl  workers  would 
sometimes  stay  on  duty  for  thirty-six  hours  at  a  stretch: 
without  having  the  opportunity  of  divesting  themselves  of 
their  clothing  and  so  gaining  a  little  real  rest. 

A  final  picture  of  Vichy  might  have  well  been  a  mental 
photograph  of  the  "  hut."  This  formerly  had  been  the 
Elysee  Palace  —  a  gaming  and  amusement  center  of  none 
too  savory  a  reputation ;  yet  with  its  central  location  on  the 
main  street,  its  ample  lounging  space,  and  its  small  theater, 
self-contained,  it  was  ideal  for  the  purposes  of  our  Red 
Cross  and  so  became  a  living  heart  of  Vichy.  It  was  the 
canteen  or  club  in  which  some  five  thousand  doughboys 
were  wont  to  congregate  each  day  —  to  write  letters  home, 
to  play  games,  or  the  tireless  piano,  to  read  the  newspapers 
or  the  magazines,  to  visit,  to  gossip  —  in  every  way  possible 
to  shorten  days  that  passed  none  to  quickly  for  any  of 
them. 

During  the  first  months  of  its  organization  this  Eed 
Cross  superhut  did  not  include  the  entire  "  Palace." 
Gradually  it  spread,  however,  until  the  entire  two  floors 
of  the  place  were  busy  with  American  Eed  Cross  activities. 
And  the  doughboy  passing  from  the  comfortable  clubrooms 
on  the  main  floor  —  wherein,  for  the  comfort  of  the  con- 
valescents, a  full-fledged  army  commissary  had  been  set  up 
—  upstairs  found  a  "  first-aid  "  room  of  a  new  sort.  It 
was,  in  fact,  an  operating  room,  where  expert  surgery  might 
be  applied  to  torn  and  ripped  and  otherwise  wounded  uni- 
forms. And  the  head  surgeon  was  a  woman  —  a  smart, 
black-eyed  French  seamstress  who  could  perform  wonders 
not  alone  with  torn  buttonholes  but  who  also  possessed  a 
facility  with  a  hot  sadiron  that  made  her  tremendously 
popular  upon  the  eve  of  certain  festal  occasions. 

"  How  would  a  dish  of  Yankee  ice  cream  taste  to-day  ? 
You  know,  the  same  sort  that  Blink  &  Smith  serve  down 
there  in  the  Universal,  at  the  corner  of  Main  and  First 
streets  ?  " 


226     WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

Imagine  something  like  that  coming  out  of  the  blue, 
and  to  a  boy  who  has  been  "  fed  up  "  on  army  cookery 
and  who  even  has  lost  his  taste  for  the  delicacy  of  French 
cookery.  You  may  take  it  direct  from  me  that  the  hut 
there  at  Vichy  held  a  kitchen  and  that  it  was  a  good 
kitchen.  Can  you  imagine  any  first-rate  American  club 
that  ever  would  fail  in  such  an  essential  ?  And  from  that 
modest  cuisine  there  in  the  pulsing  heart  of  the  bubbly 
town  came  truly  vast  quantities  of  the  trivial  foodstuffs 
that  are  forever  dear  to  the  stomach  of  the  doughboy.  Ice 
cream  —  of  course  —  and  small  meat  pies,  each  in  its 
own  little  coat  of  oiled  paper  —  and  creamy  custards  — 
and,  of  course,  once  again  —  coffee  and  all  manner  of  sand- 
wiches, imaginable  and  unimaginable.  And,  because  there 
were  many  of  the  doughboys  who  could  not  possibly  make 
their  way  to  the  hut,  even  on  crutches  or  in  wheel  chairs, 
a  camionette  drove  away  from  its  kitchen  each  day  with 
seventeen  gallons  of  ice  cream  tucked  in  it  —  all  for  the 
benefit  of  bedridden  American  soldier  boys. 

Remember,  if  you  will,  that  this  once  disreputable  Elysee 
Palace  —  in  the  glory  of  war  aid  becoming  not  only 
reputable  but  almost  sanctified  —  held  a  theater;  small, 
but  completely  equipped.  Our  Red  Cross  workers  did  not 
lose  sight  of  that  when  they  chose  the  place  as  a  headquar- 
ters for  their  endeavors.  Four  days  a  week  this  became 
a  moving-picture  house  —  just  like  the  Bijou  or  the  Or- 
pheum  back  home.  On  Wednesday  French  wounded  — 
for  whom  comfort  provisions  were  never  too  ample  — 
were  guests  there  of  the  American  Red  Cross,  and  each 
poilu  carried  away  a  little  gift  of  American  cigarettes  — 
to  any  Frenchman  the  very  greatest  of  all  treasures  Sat- 
urdays were  set  aside  for  "  competitive  vaudeville  "  or  an 
"  amateur  night " —  very  much  as  we  saw  it  at  Savenay. 
Gradually  a  stock  company  —  capable  at  least  of  one-act 
plays  —  was  evolved  from  the  dramatic  material  imme- 
diately at  hand  •- — :  soldiers  and  Red  Cross  and  hospital  men 


IN  THE  HOSPITALS  OF  THE  A.  E.  F.          227 

and  women  workers  —  with  the  result  that  by  Thanksgiv- 
ing Day,  1918,  a  very  creditable  production  entitled  "  The 
Battle  of  Vichy  "  was  produced  there  in  the  hut,  after 
which  the  company  moved  on  toward  the  conquest  of  the 
neighboring  "  metropolitan  "  towns  of  Moulins  and  Chatel- 
Guyon. 

Some  one  is  going  to  come  along  some  day  and  write  the 
analysis  of  the  innate  desire  of  the  American  to  dabble  with 
play-acting.  The  plethora  of  war-time  musical  shows  that 
became  epidemic  among  the  divisions  of  the  A.  E.  F.  and 
spread  not  merely  to  Paris  —  where  one  of  these  enter- 
tainments followed  upon  the  heels  of  another  —  but  event- 
ually to  New  York  and  other  cities  of  the  country,  affords 
interesting  possibilities  for  the  psychologist.  It  was  a 
huge  by-product  of  the  war  and  one  not  entirely  expected. 

When  the  resources  of  the  amateur  Thespians  of  Vichy 
had  become  well-nigh  exhausted,  a  New  York  professional 
actress  —  Miss  Ida  Phinney  —  who  not  only  had  real 
dramatic  ability  but  considerable  experience  in  staging  and 
producing,  was  enlisted  in  the  Red  Cross  service  there. 
With  her  aid,  the  attractive  little  cinema  theater  —  with  its 
blue  upholstery,  its  tiny  boxes,  and  its  complete  and  up-to- 
date  stage  equipment,  even  to  the  scenery  —  became  a  full- 
fledged  playhouse.  Stage  hands  and  property  men  were 
assigned  from  the  army,  and  Vichy  began  seriously  to 
stage,  costume,  and  produce  and  criticize  plays.  Soldiers 
with  a  knack  for  design  took  keen  delight  in  advising  as 
to  "  creations  "  for  the  wardrobes  of  the  cast  and  them- 
selves watched  the  garments  grow  into  reality  from  inex- 
pensive stuffs  in  the  sewing  room.  A  clever  artist  wrought 
a  full  set  of  stage  jewelry  —  even  to  the  heavy  bracelets 
and  the  inevitable  snake  rings  of  the  Oriental  dancers  — 
from  stray  scraps  of  shells  and  other  metals  that  came  to 
his  hungry  fingers,  while  the  Red  Cross  sent  a  full  comple- 
ment of  musical  instruments  down  from  Paris.  And  so 


228     WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

the  Vichy  A.  E.  F.-A.  E.  C.  Playhouse  came  into  the  full- 
ness of  its  existence  —  and  night  after  night  hung  out  the 
S.  K.  0.  sign. 

After  all,  what  is  the  doughboy's  idea  of  a  good  time? 
That  is  the  very  question  our  Red  Cross  asked  itself  - 
again  and  again.  And  because  the  correct  answer  could 
not  be  evolved  in  a  moment,  established  not  only  after  it 
had  arrived  in  France  a  Bureau  of  Recreation  and  Wel- 
fare whose  real  job  was,  after  plenty  of  practical  experi- 
mentation, to  establish  the  correct  solution  of  the  problem. 
For  a  long  time  this  Bureau  consisted  of  a  small  desk  at  the 
Paris  headquarters,  a  Ford  camionette,  and  Major  Harold 
Ober.  The  camionette  and  Ober  went  from  village  to 
village  along  the  lines  from  Bar-le-Duc  to  Gondrecourt 
with  books,  magazines,  tobacco,  writing  material,  and  a 
small  moving-picture  show.  These  efforts  many  times  fur- 
nished the  only  amusement  to  our  early  troops,  billeted  in 
quiet  villages,  where  the  quaintness  of  French  pastoral 
life  soon  lost  its  novelty. 

From  that  small  beginning,  Ober's  work  grew  steadily. 
And  because  the  Red  Cross  specialized  more  and  more  in 
that  phase  of  army  life  which  was  its  original  purpose  — 
hospitalization  —  Ober's  task  became  in  turn  more  and 
more  devoted  to  the  hospital  centers,  large  and  small  —  un- 
til the  time  came  in  practically  every  hospital  ward  in 
France  —  where  the  men  were  not  so  desperately  ill  as  to 
make  even  music  an  irritant  —  that  the  "  rag/'  and  "  jazz," 
or  the  latest  musical  comedy  hit  direct  from  Broadway  were 
constant  and  welcome  visitors  to  long  rows  of  bedridden 
boys.  In  most  cases  these  were  phonographs,  and  because 
whenever  I  wish  to  be  really  convincing  in  the  pages  of 
this  book,  I  fall  back  upon  figures,  permit  me  to  mention 
that  1,243  phonographs,  calling  for  300,000  needles  and 
29,000  records,  helped  relieve  the  tedium  of  the  American 
convalescents  in  the  hospitals  of  France. 

And,  while  we  are  still  in  figures,  remember  that  there 
were  times  —  unbelievable  as  it  may  seem  to  some  folk 


IN  THE  HOSPITALS  OF  THE  A.  E.  F.         229 

who  were  frequent  visitors  to  our  hospital  wards  over  there 
—  that  the  doughboy  tired  of  music,  canned  or  fresh,  and 
turned  gratefully  to  the  printed  page.  To  anticipate  his 
needs  in  that  regard,  American  residents  in  Paris  and  in 
London  gave  generously  of  their  private  libraries  —  a 
nucleus  which  soon  was  greatly  increased  by  purchase. 
The  books  were  sent  around  in  portable  boxes,  a  service 
which  steadily  grew  until  a  library  of  from  1,000  to  10,- 
000  books  was  maintained  by  the  American  Red  Cross  in 
each  hospital  —  a  total  of  some  100,000  all  told,  and  of 
which  a  goodly  proportion  were  histories,  French  gram- 
mars, dictionaries  and  technical  works. 

The  demand  for  periodical  literature  was  tremendous. 
In  the  months  of  December,  1918,  alone,  our  Eed  Cross 
distributed  nearly  four  million  magazines  and  newspapers 
among  our  doughboys.  Prominent  among  these  last  was 
the  Stars  and  Stripes,  the  clever  and  ingenious  publication 
of  the  enlisted  men  themselves.  A  special  "  gift  edition  " 
of  this  remarkable  weekly  was  obtained  from  the  publishers 
for  distribution  in  hospitals  alone,  and  this  ran  into  the 
hundreds  of  thousands  each  month  —  a  high  limitation 
which  was  reached  only  when  the  stock  of  print  paper  be- 
gan to  run  low.  The  demand  upon  writing  paper  was 
hardly  less  than  that  upon  print.  The  doughboy  was  a 
regular  and  prolific  correspondent,  and  before  January, 
1919,  our  Red  Cross  had  furnished  him  with  seven  million 
illustrated  post  cards,  seven  and  a  half  million  envelopes, 
and  fourteen  million  sheets  of  writing  paper. 

But  his  eternal  joy  was  in  "  shows."  These  might  be 
two  come-uppish  lads,  with  gloves,  going  it  in  a  roped 
arena,  a  flickering  lantern  displaying  the  well-known  and 
untiring  antics  of  Mr.  Charles  Chaplin  or  Mr.  Douglas 
Fairbanks,  the  exquisite  artistes  of  one  of  the  opera  houses 
in  Paris  in  a  composition  that  brought  unforgetable  joy  to 
the  ears  and  memories  of  the  many,  many  lovers  of  music  in 
our  khaki  —  or  a  homemade  production  of  the  doughboy 


230     WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

himself.  Of  these  the  " movie"  was,  of  course,  the 
simplest  to  handle,  and  therefore  by  far  the  most  universal. 
It  began  its  A.  E.  F.  career  in  France  as  a  true  "  barn- 
stormer." As  early  as  July,  1917,  a  Red  Cross  man  with 
a  French  motion-picture  operator  as  an  assistant  had  hied 
himself  out  from  Paris,  riding  in  one  of  the  universal 
Ford  camionettes,  upon  which  had  been  mounted  a  genera- 
tor and  a  projector.  Upon  arriving  at  an  army  camp,  the 
show  would  be  "  put  on  " —  with  little  fuss  OT  delay.  The 
smooth,  whitewashed  side  of  a  stone  building  would  make 
a  bully  screen  and  there  was  never  even  doubts  of  an  audi- 
ence or  of  its  enthusiasms.  For  from  wonderments  at  this 
additional  strange  contraption  from  the  Etats  Unis,  the 
peasants  and  the  poilus>  who  were  its  very  first  admirers, 
grew  rapidly  into  Mary  Pickford  and  Charlie  Chaplin  and 
Billie  Burke  fans.  This  taste  followed  closely  that  all- 
conquering  admiration  for  our  chewing  gum  which  over- 
came the  French  and  left  them  quite  helpless. 

Eventually  this  "  movie  "  institution  of  the  Red  Cross 
overseas  grew  to  sizable  proportions,  under  the  direction  of 
Lawrence  Arnold,  of  New  York.  At  least  five  and  some- 
times fourteen  performances  a  week  were  given  at  each 
of  our  American  hospitals  in  France  —  and  with  a  com- 
plete change  of  program  each  week  even  to  the  Pathe 
weekly  news,  which  was  purchased  and  sent  overseas  by  the 
Westchester  County  (N.  Y.)  Chapter  of  the  American  Red 
Cross  as  its  own  special  contribution.  But  I  think  that 
the  most  interesting  feature  of  this  entire  work  —  and  the 
most  human  —  was  the  ingenious  scheme  by  which  the  pro- 
jectors were  so  adapted  as  to  throw  the  pictures  upon  the 
ceilings  of  the  wards  and  so  give  an  untold  pleasure  and 
diversion  to  the  tedious  hours  of  our  boys  who  were  so 
completely  bedridden  as  not  to  be  able  to  even  sit  erect. 
And  there  were  many  such. 

We  have  drifted  for  the  moment  quite  away  from  Vichy 
and  the  lovely  blue  and  white  and  gold  theater  of  our  Red 


IN  THE  HOSPITALS  OF  THE  A.  E.  F.         231 

Cross  in  the  heart  of  that  ancient  town.  While  it  was 
headquarters,  it  was,  after  all,  but  part  of  the  American 
Red  Cross  show  there ;  because  while  our  Red  Cross  recog- 
nized that  the  biggest  part  of  its  job  was  taking  care  of  the 
enlisted  man  it  was  by  no  means  blind  to  the  necessities  of 
his  officers.  Which  led  to  the  regeneration  —  moral  and 
otherwise  —  of  still  another  well-known  gambling  place  in 
the  town  —  the  smart  casino  in  the  center  of  the  park. 
This  became,  quite  quickly  and  easily,  an  officers7  club  for 
the  A.  E.  F.  One  room  was  reserved  ordinarily  for  the 
French,  while  at  least  once  a  week  the  entire  place  was 
given  over  to  a  dance. 

Dancing !  Neither  the  enlisted  man  nor  the  officer  ever 
seemed  to  tire  of  it.  Each  week  also  the  enlisted  men 
piled  up  the  tables  and  the  chairs  in  their  hut  and  conducted 
a  dance  of  their  own,  of  which  one  of  the  chief  features  was 
ice  cream  —  not  fox-trotting.  As  in  the  huts  and  canteens 
elsewhere  across  France  there  were  never  nearly  enough 
girls  to  serve  as  partners  for  the  men.  But  there  were  no 
"  wallflowers."  The  floor  manager  always  carried  a 
whistle.  A  number  of  times  during  the  progress  of  each 
number  he  blew  it  —  as  a  signal  that  the  men  lined  along 
the  walls  were  privileged  to  "  cut  in  "  on  those  already 
dancing.  And  on  the  occasions  when  some  restless,  impet- 
uous boy  blew  a  whistle  of  his  own  and  seized  the  first 
partner  available  there  was  ever  a  delightful  confusion. 

Yet  with  all  these  things  it  could  not  be  said  that  life  in 
the  hospital  center  was  exactly  an  even  round  of  social 
events;  yet  it  rarely  ever  ceased  for  long  to  be  dramatic. 
Take  that  November  evening  when  twenty-seven  hundred 
of  our  boys  who  had  been  prisoners  of  the  boche  came  slip- 
ping into  Vichy.  Their  uniforms  were  filthy  and  ragged. 
Slung  from  their  shoulders  were  the  Red  Cross  boxes  such 
as  had  sustained  them  not  only  during  their  incarceration 
in  Germany  but  on  their  long  journey  out  of  that  miserable 
place. 


232  WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

The  limited  capacity  of  these  Red  Cross  boxes  for  our 
imprisoned  men  had  precluded  their  containing  much  more 
than  mere  food  necessities.  And  the  boys  in  the  ragged 
uniforms  were  hungry,  not  only  for  food  of  the  "  home- 
cooked  "  varieties,  but  for  everyday  human  associations. 
They  had  both;  even  though  the  hut  and  the  casino  each 
worked  steadily  and  for  long  hours  six  wonderful  nights 
in  succession.  Nearly  four  thousand  miles  away  from 
home,  every  effort  was  made  to  make  this  home-coming  into 
Vichy  from  the  neutral  gateways  of  Switzerland  a  real  one. 

These  prisoners,  as  well  as  the  greater  numbers  of  the 
wounded,  arrived  with  practically  no  personal  possessions. 
The  army  promptly  re-equipped  them  with  uniforms,  but 
the  job  of  the  Home  and  Hospital  Bureau  of  the  Army  and 
Navy  Department,  which  had  this  particular  part  of  the 
big  Bed  Cross  job  as  its  very  own  province,  was  to  antici- 
pate and  look  after  all  of  their  personal  necessities.  This 
thing  it  did,  and  its  representatives  cooperated  with  the 
army  officers  in  studying  the  most  urgent  requirements  and 
finding  the  very  gifts  which  would  provide  the  greatest 
proportion  of  real  comfort. 

Come  back,  if  you  will,  once  again  to  statistics.  I 
make  no  apologies  for  introducing  the  flavor  of  the  official 
report  into  this  narrative  from  time  to  time.  Reports  oft- 
times  are  indeed  dull  things ;  but  the  reports  of  almost  any 
department  of  the  Red  Cross  have  a  real  human  interest  — 
even  when  they  seemingly  deal  with  mere  percentages  and 
rows  of  figures.  Take  a  hospital  which  solemnly  reports 
that  175,872  hospital  days  have  been  given  to  the  army  in 
the  short  space  of  four  months.  That  fact  can  hardly  be 
dismissed  as  a  dull  statement.  It  carries  with  it  pictures 
of  white  wards,  of  the  capable  hands  of  nurses,  of  the  faces 
of  brave  boys  in  long  lines  along  the  ways  of  an  institution 
which  modestly  confesses  that  it  holds  but  a  mere  fifteen 
hundred  beds. 

Because  the  following  excerpt  from  the  report  of  a  Red 


IN  THE  HOSPITALS  OF  THE  A.  E.  F.          233 

Cross  captain  at  Vichy  carries  with  it  a  picture  of  the  boys 
who  straggled  into  the  local  headquarters  asking  for  every- 
thing from  socks  to  chewing  gum,  it  is  set  down  here : 

"  During  the  month  of  October  (1918),  78,278  packages 
of  tobacco,  7,480  tubes  of  tooth  paste,  7,650  toothbrushes, 
3,650  combs,  3,460  Eed  Cross  bags,  2,850  packages  of  gum, 
1,650  cakes  of  soap,  1,250  pipes,  1,560  handkerchiefs,  1,245 
cakes  of  chocolate,  1,200  packages  of  shaving  soap,  950 
pencils,  1,000  boxes  of  matches,  900  shaving  brushes,  500 
packages  of  playing  cards,  450  washcloths,  400  sweaters, 
350  razors,  350  boxes  of  talcum  powder,  and  various 
smaller  amounts  of  pens,  ink,  malted  milk,  razor  blades, 
checkers,  thread,  games,  pipe  cleaners,  scissors,  and  drink- 
ing cups  were  distributed  free ;  chiefly,  so  far  as  we  know, 
to  penniless  boys.  As  this  is  written,  this  office  is  having 
a  thousand  applicants  a  day  and,  while  all  their  wants 
cannot  be  met,  no  one  leaves  empty-handed.  .  .  ." 

"  No  one  leaves  empty-handed.  .  .  ." 

The  boys  who  marched  across  the  snow-blanketed  park 
at  Vichy  that  January  morning  with  their  crimson-crossed 
bags  in  their  hands,  were,  after  all,  only  typical  of  many 
thousands  who  had  gone  before.  For  three  days  they  had 
anticipated  their  evacuation  by  asking  for  writing  paper, 
for  souvenir  postals,  for  pocket  song  books,  for  gloves, 
sweaters,  and  the  rest  of  the  usual  output  of  the  Eed  Cross 
—  the  variety  of  whose  resources  would  put  a  modern 
city  department  store  to  the  blush.  One  youngster  came 
to  the  headquarters  on  the  last  day  holding  his  trench  cap 
in  his  hand. 

"  It's  too  dirty  for  the  trip  home,"  he  said.  "  Can't  the 
Red  Cross  get  me  a  new  one  ?  " 

No,  the  Red  Cross  could  not  duplicate  the  work  of  the 
army's  quartermasters,  but  it  could,  and  would,  help  the 
boy  out.  So  it  gave  him  a  cake  of  soap  and  showed  him 
how  he  could  clean  his  greasy  cap  quite  thoroughly  and 
then  dry  it  on  the  office  stove  before  starting  on  the  march 
across  the  park. 


234:     WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

The  difficulties  of  keeping  up  a  full  stock  of  Ked  Cross 
supplies  of  every  sort  in  a  land  and  in  times  when  shipping 
space  of  all  kinds  was  at  a  great  premium  should  be  obvi- 
ous. Of  necessity  surgical  supplies  took  precedence  over 
luxuries  of  every  sort.  Then  it  was  that  such  places  as 
Vichy  and  Savenay  and  all  the  rest  of  them  had  to  depend, 
not  alone  upon  their  normal  receipts,  but  upon  the  resource- 
fulness of  individual  workers  and  the  fruitfulness  of  the 
surrounding  country.  That  was  the  reason  why  in  one 
instance  when  Red  Cross  bags  could  not  be  shipped  into 
Vichy,  they  were  manufactured  there  by  the  thousands  by 
French  needlewomen.  Indeed  no  doughboy  should  leave 
"  empty-handed."  Near  by  districts  for  a  considerable 
number  of  miles  roundabout  were  invaded  by  automobiles 
seeking  the  bright-colored  cretonnes,  which  make  the  bags 
so  very  gay  and,  in  turn,  so  much  the  more  welcome. 

On  at  least  two  other  occasions  the  vicinage  was  similarly 
combed  for  emergency  supplies  —  for  the  American  cele- 
brations of  both  Thanksgiving  Day  and  Christmas,  1918. 
Much  was  made  of  both  these  glorious  Yankee  holidays. 
The  time  was  propitious  for  real  celebration.  Peace  was 
not  only  in  the  air,  but  at  last  actually  accomplished.  The 
hearts  of  men  were  softened.  One  could  sing  of  "  peace 
on  earth  "  and  not  choke  as  the  words  came  to  his  lips. 

So  it  was  that  Christmas  Day  at  Vichy  was  a  particu- 
larly gay  one  —  gay,  despite  even  the  pain  and  suffering 
that  remained  in  all  the  great  hospital  wards  there.  For 
men  —  American  men,  if  you  please,  could,  and  did,  hide 
for  the  nonce  their  fearful  suffering.  Pain  begone !  The 
carols  were  in  the  air.  The  hundreds  of  gayly  decorated 
electric-light  bulbs  were  flashing  on  at  dusk.  And  you 
might  go  from  ward  to  ward  and  there  count  all  of  fifty 
Christmas  trees  —  these,  too,  brilliantly  decorated.  And 
the  decorators  in  all  these  instances  had  been  Ked  Cross 
women  and  men  —  and  wounded  soldiers  lying  ill  at  ease 
in  their  hospital  cots.  They  made  a  great  job  of  all  of  it 
—  a  merry  job  as  well.  And  when  the  supplies  of  such 


IN  THE  HOSPITALS  OF  THE  A.  E.  F.         235 

conventional  raw  materials  as  tinsel  and  popcorn  fell  short 
they  seemed  to  find  something  else  that  did  quite  as  well. 

For  that  hospital  celebration  among  our  wounded  men 
at  Vichy  just  13,657  socks  were  filled,  which  bespeaks 
the  exact  number  of  doughboys  that  participated  in  the 
celebration.  If  they  could  have  spoken,  each  of  these 
humble  articles  of  clothing  might  easily  have  told  a  double 
story  —  the  tale  of  its  own  origin  and  the  romance  that 
came  to  it  after  that  memorable  Christmas  Day ;  for  they 
were  American  knit  socks,  and  no  factory  —  no  inanimate, 
impersonal  place,  peopled  with  machines  rather  than  with 
humans  —  had  turned  them  forth.  Each  and  every  one  of 
them  were  hand-knitted.  And  some  of  them  had  come 
from  my  lady's  parlor,  situated  in  an  upper  floor,  perhaps, 
of  a  great  and  gaudy  apartment  house,  and  some  had  come 
from  the  prairie  ranch,  and  some  had  come  from  cabins 
upon  the  steep  and  desolate  mountainsides  of  the  Alle- 
ghenies  or  the  Eockies  or  the  Sierras.  From  East  and 
West  and  North  and  South  they  had  come  —  but  all  had 
come  from  the  United  States ;  and  I  am  perfectly  willing 
to  predict  that  every  blessed  one  returned  forthwith  to  the 
land  of  its  birth. 

The  mate  of  each  one  of  these  13,657  socks  was  rolled 
and  placed  in  its  toe.  Then  followed  other  things  —  shav- 
ing soap,  cigarettes,  tobacco,  nuts,  candy,  handkerchiefs 
—  by  this  time  you  ought  to  know  the  Red  Cross  list  as 
well  as  I.  While,  by  connivance  with  the  head  nurse  of 
each  of  the  wards,  each  blessed  sock  was  individually  tagged 
and  addressed  to  its  recipient.  There  is  nothing,  you 
know,  like  personal  quality  in  a  Christmas  gift. 

If,  after  the  perusal  of  all  these  pages,  you  still  insist 
upon  being  one  of  those  folk  who  regard  the  triumph  of  our 
Red  Cross  in  France  as  one  of  American  organization, 
rather  than  of  American  individualism,  and  American 
generosity,  permit  me  to  explain  to  you  that  in  the  para- 
graphs of  this  chapter  you  have  slipped  from  the  work  of 


236  WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

the  Bureau  of  Hospital  Administration  to  that  of  the  Home 
and  Hospital  Bureau  of  the  Army  and  Navy  Department. 
The  distinctly  medical  and  surgical  phases  of  the  Eed 
Cross  work  in  the  A.  E.  F.  hospitals  across  France  was  a 
major  portion  of  the  burden  of  Colonel  Burlingame's  job; 
the  more  purely  recreative  and  comfort-giving  phases  came 
under  Majors  J.  B.  A.  Fosburgh  and  Horace  M.  Swope, 
both  of  whom  served  as  directors  of  the  Army  and  Navy 
Departments  during  the  Gibson  regime.  But  the  distinc- 
tion between  these  two  departments  was  almost  entirely  one 
of  name.  Each,  after  all,  was  American  Red  Cross  and 
as  American  Red  Cross  worked  —  to  a  common  and  un- 
selfish and  entirely  humanitarian  end. 

If  I  have  lingered  upon  Vichy  it  has  been  because  its 
story  was  so  nearly  the  story  of  the  Red  Cross  work  in  other 
A.  E.  F.  hospitals  across  France.  The  narrative  of  each 
differs  as  a  rule  only  in  the  most  minor  details.  Some- 
times, of  course,  the  unexpected  happened,  as  at  leaves, 
where  our  Red  Cross  under  emergency  served  a  double  pur- 
pose. During  the  October,  1918,  drive,  when  the  Amer- 
ican Army  was  functioning  to  its  highest  efficiency  and  in 
so  functioning  was,  of  necessity,  making  a  fearful  sacrifice 
of  its  human  units,  this  hut  was  taken  over  by  the  Medical 
Corps  of  the  army  and  fitted  out  as  an  emergency  ward, 
with  ninety-five  cots.  For  six  weeks  it  so  served  as  a 
direct  hospital  function. 

In  the  great  Base  Hospital  "No.  114  at  Beau  Deserte- 
just  outside  the  embarkation  ports  of  Bordeaux  and 
Bassens  —  our  Red  Cross  not  only  served  from  1,200  to 
1,500  cups  of  coffee  a  day  in  its  huge  hut,  but  actually 
maintained  an  athletic  field,  in  addition  to  the  billiard 
tables  which  were  an  almost  universal  feature  of  every 
Red  Cross  hut.  And  at  another  base  hospital  in  that  same 
Bordeaux  district,  several  companies  of  evacuated  men 
were  being  told  off  into  groups  of  a  hundred  each  —  and 
each  in  charge  of  a  top  sergeant  —  ready  to  sail  on  the  fol- 


IN  THE  HOSPITALS  OF  THE  A.  E.  F.          237 

lowing  day.  Then,  just  as  the  men  were  about  to  march 
to  the  gangplank  of  the  waiting  steamer,  one  of  their  num- 
ber fell  ill  of  the  scarlet  fever  and  the  entire  group  had  to 
be  quarantined.  It  was  one  of  the  many  jobs  of  the  Ked 
Cross  force  there  to  keep  these  restless  and  disappointed 
men  amused  and  as  happy  as  possible,  and  in  turn  neces- 
sary to  use  a  little  philosophy. 

Philosophy  ? 

One  Red  Cross  girl  down  there  at  that  particular  time 
told  me  how  she  had  experimented  with  it  in  that  trying 
instance.  Her  eyes  sparkled  as  she  announced  the  results 
of  the  experiments. 

"  It  worked,  it  really  worked,"  she  said.  "  I  found  a 
group  of  colored  men,  and  upon  that  group  used  all  the 
scientific  new  thought  that  I  might  possibly  bring  to  my 
aid,  and  with  real  success.  The  men  were  mollified  and  a 
bit  contented,  so  that  one  of  them  —  I  think  that  back  in 
the  Middle  West  he  had  been  a  Pullman  porter  —  finally 
came  to  me  and  said : 

"  '  Missy,  I's  a-found  our  hoodoo.  Sure  what  could  we 
expect  when  we've  got  a  cross-eyed  nigger  preacher  in  our 
squad? '" 


CHAPTER  X 

"  PACK  UP  YOUR  TROUBLES  IN  YOUR  OLD  KIT  BAG " 

<  i\T\T OTOTDED  yesterday;  feeling  fine  to-day." 

V  V  How  many  times  that  message  —  varying  some- 
times in  its  exact  phrasing,  but  never  in  its  intent  —  was 
flashed  from  France  to  the  United  States  during  the 
progress  of  the  war  never  will  be  known.  It  was  a  lie  - 
of  course.  Would  any  sane  mother  believe  it,  even  for  a 
minute  ?  But  it  was  the  lie  glorified  —  the  lie  idealized, 
if  you  will  permit  me  to  use  such  an  expression.  And  it 
was  the  only  lie  that  I  have  ever  known  to  be  not  only  sanc- 
tioned, but  officially  urged,  by  a  great  humanitarian  organ- 
ization. For  the  Red  Cross  searchers  in  the  American  hos- 
pitals in  France  were  not  allowed  to  write  to  the  folks  at 
home  in  any  other  tenor.  Little  scraps  of  messages  mut- 
tered, perhaps,  between  groans  and  prayers,  were  hastily 
taken  down  by  the  Red  Cross  women  in  the  hospitals,  and 
by  them  quickly  translated  into  a  message  of  good  cheer 
for  the  cable  overseas.  Any  other  sort  was  unthinkable. 

Here  was  a  typical  one  of  these : 

"  Wounded  yesterday  in  stomach  —  feeling  fine.  Tell 
mother  will  be  up  in  a  day  or  two." 

Would  you  like  to  look  behind  the  scenes  in  the  case  of 
this  particular  message?  Then  come  with  me.  We  are 
"  behind  the  scenes  "  now  —  in  the  dressing  room  which 
closely  adjoins  the  operating  room  in  a  big  American  evac- 
uation hospital  not  far  from  Verdun.  They  had  done  with 
him  on  the  operating  table  —  for  the  moment.  One  oper- 
ation had  been  performed,  but  another  was  to  follow 
quickly.  In  the  meantime,  the  soldier  boy  —  he  really 
was  not  much  more  than  a  boy  —  sat  straight  upward  on 

238 


"  PACK  UP  YOUR  TROUBLES  "  239 

his  cot  and  watched  them  as  they  pulled  the  tight,  clinging 
gauze  from  his  raw  and  tender  flesh.  All  he  said  during 
the  process  was : 

"  Do  you  think  that  I  could  rest  a  minute,  doc,  before 
you  do  the  second  one  ?  " 

He  got  his  momentary  rest.  And  as  he  got  it,  sat,  with 
a  cigarette  between  his  tightly  clinched  teeth,  and  dictated 
the  letter  home  which  you  have  just  read. 

Another  Eed  Cross  girl  walking  through  one  of  the 
wards  of  that  same  hospital  near  Verdun  stopped  at  the 
signal  of  a  wounded  man  who  lay  abed.  He  was  a  very 
sick-looking  man;  his  face  had  the  very  pallor  of  death. 
And  his  voice  was  very  low  and  weak  as  he  told  the  Red 
Cross  woman  that  he  wanted  her  to  write  a  letter  for  him 
to  his  wife  back  in  a  little  Indiana  town. 

"  Tell  that  I'm  wounded — just  a  little  wounded,  you 
understand.  Got  a  little  shrapnel  in  my  legs,  but  that  I'll 
be  home  by  Christmas.  Did  you  get  all  of  that  ?  " 

The  girl  nodded  yes.  She  took  the  notes  on  a  bit  of 
scrap  paper  mechanically;  for  all  the  time  her  eyes  were 
on  the  face  of  the  man.  All  the  time  save  once  —  when 
they  fell  upon  the  smooth  counterpane  of  his  bed,  then  re- 
turned to  the  man's  face  once  again.  She  knew  that  he 
was  lying,  and  because  she  was  new,  just  come  over  from 
America  —  she  did  not  know  that  the  Red  Cross  held  one 
particular  lie  to  be  both  glorified  and  sanctified  —  she 
folded  up  the  memorandum,  told  the  wounded  man  that  she 
would  write  the  letter  —  and  went  out. 

She  went  straight  to  the  records  room  of  the  place. 
Yes,  it  was  true.  Her  suspicions  as  to  the  unnatural 
smoothness  of  that  counterpane  were  confirmed  there.  The 
man  had  had  shrapnel  in  both  legs,  but  that  was  not  all. 
Both  had  been  amputated  —  well  above  the  knees. 

The  Red  Cross  girl  went  back  to  him,  her  eyes  blazing 
with  anger.  Her  anger  all  but  overcame  her  natural  ten- 
derness. 


240  WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

"  I  can't,  I  can't,"  she  expostulated.  "  I  can't  send 
that  letter." 

"  Why  can't  you  ?  "  he  coolly  replied. 

She  faced  him  with  the  truth. 

"  Well,  what  of  it  ?  "  said  he.  "  If  I  do  get  home,  I'll 
get  home  by  Christmas  —  and  that  will  be  time  enough  for 
her  to  know  the  truth.  She'll  be  ready  for  it,  then. 
But  — "  he  lowered  his  voice  almost  to  a  whisper  —  "  I'm 
not  going  to  get  home.  The  doctor's  told  me  that,  but  he 
don't  have  to  tell  me;  I  know  it.  And  if  I  don't  get  home 

she'll  never  be  the  wiser You  write  that  letter,  just  as 

I  told  it  to  you." 

Here  was  by  far  the  saddest  phase  of  the  Red  Cross 
work  for  our  soldier  boys  —  and  almost  the  most  import- 
ant. It  was  one  thing  for  the  girl  in  the  steel-gray  uni- 
form, with  the  little  crimson  crosses  affixed  to  her  shoulders, 
to  play  and  make  merry  with  the  wounded  men  who  were 
getting  well ;  but  it  was  a  different  and  vastly  more  diffi- 
cult part  of  the  job  to  play  fair,  let  alone  make  merry,  with 
those  who  were  not  going  to  get  well;  who,  at  the  best, 
were  to  shuffle  through  the  rest  of  their  lives  maimed  or 
crippled  or  blind.  Yet  what  an  essential  part  of  the  big 
job  all  that  was !  And  how  our  girls  —  moved  by  those 
great  fountains  of  human  love  and  sympathy  and  tender- 
ness that  seemingly  spring  forever  in  women's  hearts,  rose 
to  this  supreme  test  over  there!  And  after  they  had  so 
arisen  how  trivial  seemed  the  mere  handing  out  of  sand- 
wiches or  coffee  or  cigarettes !  This  was  the  real  touch  of 
war  —  the  touch  supreme.  After  it,  all  others  seemed 
almost  as  nothing. 

Early  in  the  progress  of  the  conflict  our  Red  Cross  fore- 
saw the  great  necessity  that  would  be  coming  for  its  acting 
as  a  medium  of  communication  between  the  doughboy  and 
his  folks  —  three  thousand  miles  or  more  away.  The 
United  States  Army  had  made  little  or  no  provision  to  meet 


"PACK  UP  YOUR  TROUBLES"  241 

this  need ;  it  had  far  larger  and  far  more  immediate  prob- 
lems ahead  of  it.  And  so  about  the  best  that  it  could  be 
expected  to  do  would  be  to  notify  the  folks  at  home  that 
their  boy  had  made  sacrifice  —  supreme  or  very  great  - 
for  his  country ;  at  the  best,  a  sort  of  emotionless  proceed- 
ing upon  its  part.  In  the  meantime  there  was  hardly  a 
waking  hour  that  those  selfsame  folks  were  not  thinking 
of  the  boy  in  khaki.  While  if  anything  happened  to  him 
—  serious  even,  but  not  quite  serious  enough  to  justify 
the  setting  of  the  somewhat  cumbersome  machinery  of  the 
army's  elaborate  system  of  notification  into  motion  —  both 
he  and  the  folks  were  helpless.  France  is  indeed  a  long, 
long  distance  away  from  the  United  States.  Three  thou- 
sand miles  is  a  gap  not  easily  spanned. 

But  it  was  the  job  of  the  American  Ked  Cross  to  span 
that  gap;  not  only  to  bring  news  of  the  boy  to  the  home 
folks,  but,  in  many,  many  instances,  to  bring  news  of  them 
to  him.  The  one  thing  was  nearly  as  valuable  as  the  other. 
And  while  in  the  elaborate  organization  of  the  American 
Red  Cross  they  were  operated  as  separate  functions  and 
bureaus,  their  work  in  reality  was  so  interwoven  that  in  the 
pages  of  this  book  we  shall  consider  them  virtually  as  one, 
and  shall  begin  a  serious  consideration  of  this  important 
phase  of  Eed  Cross  work  by  calling  attention  to  a  very  few 
of  the  ramifications  of  a  hospital  searcher's  job.  First  and 
foremost  her  task  was  to  tell  those  same  home  folks  all  that 
she  could  pen,  or  typewrite,  about  their  own  particular 
soldier  —  exactly  where  he  was  at  that  time  and  just  how  he 
progressed.  The  ordinary  method  of  handling  the  vast 
volume  of  these  messages  was  in  the  form  of  short,  concise, 
personal  reports  which  passed  through  the  Paris  headquar- 
ters of  the  American  Eed  Cross  and  were  forwarded  by  it  to 
the  National  Headquarters  at  Washington,  where  they  were 
made  up  into  letters  and  forwarded  to  the  families.  There 
were,  of  course,  many  variations  in  this  method;  for  in- 
stance, when  it  was  advisable  for  Paris  to  write  direct  to  the 
boy's  parents,  and  in  those  other  cases,  which  you  have  al- 


242  WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

ready  seen,  where  the  letter  to  America  went  direct  from  the 
Red  Cross  worker's  room  at  the  hospital.  The  choice  be- 
tween these  methods  was  left  quite  largely  to  the  individual 
worker  who,  in  turn,  weighed  each  situation  and  its  neces- 
sities, individually  and  separately. 

It  was  only  in  these  last  instances  that  the  lie  was  sanc- 
tioned and  even  permitted,  and  even  then  only  upon  the 
absolute  demand  of  the  wounded  man,  himself.  He  had 
all  the  rights  in  such  a  situation,  and  the  Red  Cross  bowed 
to  and  respected  those  rights  —  in  every  case. 

The  Red  Cross  reports  through  headquarters  were  ac- 
curate —  invariably,  and,  at  first  sight,  generally  unemo- 
tional. Here  is  one  of  them  that  is  quite  typical : 

"  Private  Edward  Jones  —  20th  Regiment,  Company 
H  —  has  been  wounded  in  both  legs.  Wounds  painful, 
but  amputation  not  necessary.  In  excellent  spirits  — 
sends  love  to  family." 

Short,  to  be  sure.  But  to  a  newsless  family  three  thou- 
sand —  perhaps  six  thousand  —  miles  away,  with  its  neces- 
sary detail,  tremendously  satisfying. 

Return  with  me  if  you  will  for  a  final  visit  to  Vichy. 
'No  group  of  Red  Cross  workers  anywhere  held  a  more 
sacred  responsibility  than  the  women  who  were  stationed 
there.  Day  in  and  day  out  they  passed  through  the  white 
lanes  of  wards  in  the  military  hospitals  and  each  day  looked 

—  and  looked  deeply  —  into  the  hearts  of  the  American 
boys  that  lined  them.     Heart  and  soul  these  women  of  the 
steel-gray  uniforms  were  at  the  service  of  our  wounded 
soldier  men  —  at  their  very  beck  and  call,  if  you  please. 
And  when  of  a  morning  a  bed  here  or  a  bed  there  was 
empty,  the  searchers  understood,  and  prepared  to  write  a 
letter  —  a  scant  matter  of  sympathetic  record  at  the  best 

—  that  somewhere  back  in  America  would  at  least  relieve 
the  tension  of  waiting. 

Some  of  the  messages  that  these  searchers  sent  were  — 
as  you  already  know  —  full  of  gladness ;  thank  God  for 


"PACK  UP  YOUR  TROUBLES"  243 

them !  Others  warned  gently  —  the  boy  was  coming  home 
with  his  face  forever  scarred  or  his  limbs  or  his  eyes  gone. 
Still  others  told  —  and  told  again  and  again  —  of  the 
brave  and  the  battling  sonl  that  finally  had  slipped  away 
into  the  eternal  mystery  of  the  Valley.  Each  of  these  last 
held  between  its  tiny  pages  a  single  flower  —  plucked  at 
the  last  moment  from  the  funeral  wreath. 

Let  me  quote  from  one  of  these  letters  of  a  Red  Cross 
searcher. 

"  I  am  constantly  on  duty  here,"  she  says,  "  and  visit 
your  brother  Harry  almost  daily.  He  has  been  unfortu- 
nate enough  to  have  been  wounded  in  the  right  leg,  which 
the  doctors  found  necessary  to  amputate  just  below  the 
knee.  I  know  this  will  be  a  great  shock  to  you,  but  let  me 
hasten  to  add  that  Harry  is  in  the  best  of  condition  other- 
wise. The  wound  is  healing  marvelously  clean  and 
quickly.  He  is  in  the  healthiest  and  happiest  frame  of 
mind  and  exceptionally  cheerful.  Harry  wants  me  to 
tell  you  that  the  last  dressing  of  the  wound  was  yesterday. 
He  expects  to  be  up  and  trying  his  crutches  within  ten  days. 
He  received  your  September  money  order  of  ten  dollars  for 
which  he  thanks  you  very  much.  I  have  just  cashed  it  for 
him.  ...  I  am  sorry  to  be  the  bearer  of  this  sad  news,  but 
am  happy  that  I  can  assure  you  of  his  early  recovery  and 
his  splendid  courage." 

Men  who  were  able  to  write  for  themselves  were  supplied 
with  paper  and  encouraged  to  do  so.  Others  who  were  far 
too  ill  or  confined  prone  in  surgical  apparatus  —  their  very 
hands  caught  and  held  taut  in  a  cruel  network  of  pulleys 
and  weights  and  drain  tubes  —  dictated  their  letters  home 
—  and  invariably  lied  as  to  their  condition.  All  was 
"  going  well."  The  patient  sufferer  had  but  one  report  to 
pass  his  lips.  "  Tell  them  that  I'm  feeling  fine,"  was  the 
message  that  he  ordered  home. 

Sometimes  by  piecing  together  information  culled  from 
a  variety  of  sources,  the  searcher  was  enabled  to  reconstruct 
the  picture  of  the  last  hour  of  some  soldier's  life.  Com- 


244     WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

rades  would  recount  the  story  of  his  death  at  the  front  or 
describe  the  moment  of  his  capture  by  the  enemy.  In  fact 
persistent  questioning  revealed  such  facts  as  finally  cleared 
up  the  doubt  as  to  the  fate  of  a  certain  Yankee  corporal. 
It  happened  that  the  boy  had  disappeared  in  April,  1918. 
It  was  a  number  of  months  afterward  that  a  patient  was 
discovered  at  a  port  of  embarkation  who  said : 

"  Yes,  he  was  killed  when  the  Germans  were  attacking 
and  a  heavy  barrage  was  coming  over.  They  came  around 
back  of  us  and  threw  hand  grenades  from  the  rear.  Cor- 
poral   pulled  his  pistol  and  yelled :  '  Here  they  come, 

boys !  Give  it  to  them ! '  He  was  awfully  generous.  He 
used  to  get  a  lot  of  scrapbooks  and  pass  them  around  to  the 
boys.  When  he  got  a  box  from  home  he  shared  it.  He 
was  a  mighty  generous  fellow  about  lending  money,  too." 

The  women  who  made  those  scrapbooks  and  packed  those 
boxes  of  "  goodies  "  can  have  no  memento  from  his  grave 
over  there,  but  here  was  the  sweet  memory  of  his  courage 
and  his  generosity.  Think  of  the  comfort  that  her 
woman's  soul  must  have  found  in  that  frank,  outspoken 
boyish  tribute  and  the  relief  at  finally  having  had  at  least 
the  definite  information  of  the  truth !  So  it  was  that  our 
Red  Cross  searchers  gave  constant  and  almost  invaluable 
aid  in  revising  and  verifying  the  casualty  lists  of  the  army ; 
and  many  who  were  accounted  missing  —  that  dread  term 
that  means  nothing  and  yet  can  mean  so  much  —  could, 
because  of  their  work,  be  accurately  enrolled  as  dead  or 
as  prisoners. 

As  far  back  as  the  summer  of  1917  five  women  had  been 
definitely  assigned  to  this  activity  —  not  at  Vichy  then, 
but  at  the  American  army  hospitals  which  already  were 
beginning  to  multiply  in  France.  By  December  of  the 
following  year  this  staff  numbered  nearly  two  hundred 
women,  who  worked  either  in  the  hospitals  or  in  the  Ameri- 
can Red  Cross  headquarters  in  Paris.  And  while  these 
worked  in  the  hospitals,  the  Red  Cross  officers  in  the  field  - 
men  serving  as  searchers,  chaplains,  or  Home  Communica- 


"  PACK  UP  YOUE  TROUBLES  "  245 

tion  representatives  —  were  working  in  close  cooperation 
with  the  statistical  officers  of  the  army.  These  were  sta- 
tioned in  training  camps  and  concentration  camps  and  with 
various  combat  divisions.  Ten  men  were  assigned  direct 
by  the  Ked  Cross  to  the  Central  Kecords  Office  of  the 
Adjutant  General's  Department  of  the  A.  E.  E. 

Understand  very  clearly,  if  you  will,  please,  once  again, 
that  while  in  very  rare  cases  our  Red  Cross  did  announce 
casualties,  that,  after  all,  was  not  its  real  province.  To 
engage  in  that  would  have  been  a  mere  duplication  of  the 
army's  own  work.  Mortality  letters  were  not  sent  direct 
to  the  nearest  of  kin ;  they  were  forwarded  to  the  A.  E.  E. 
Central  Records  Office  in  Erance  for  final  disposition,  so 
that  their  release  through  the  mails  would  not  anticipate  the 
official  announcement  from  the  War  Department;  while 
the  other  information,  in  most  instances,  was  reported  to 
the  Paris  headquarters  of  the  American  Red  Cross  and  was 
later  disseminated  here  in  the  United  States  from  the 
American  Red  Cross  headquarters  in  Washington. 

The  lists  of  the  missing  soldiers  were  furnished  by  the 
army.  Duplicates  of  these  were  then  immediately  dis- 
tributed to  the  Red  Cross  searchers  and  representatives, 
who  at  once  sought  clues  to  the  individual  stories  to  be 
builded  about  the  name  of  each  man.  Sometimes  through 
arrangements  with  the  army  authorities  the  boche  prisoners 
were  interviewed,  and  these  occasionally  furnished  facts 
with  reference  to  American  prisoners  in  Germany  and  gave 
definite  information  about  aviators  who  had  apparently  dis- 
appeared within  the  enemy  lines. 

Incorporated  in  these  lists  of  the  missing  were  also  the 
names  of  all  soldiers  and  sailors  concerning  whom  inquiries 
had  been  made  of  our  Red  Cross  either  here  in  America  or 
over  there  in  Erance.  In  the  one  case  these  inquiries  and 
in  the  other  through  the  Paris  headquarters  in  the  Hotel 
Regina.  In  one  month  1,955  cables  were  sent  across  the 
Atlantic  from  the  United  States  requiring  immediate  in- 
formation regarding  wounded  or  missing  men.  In  Decem- 


246  WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

ber,  just  following  the  armistice,  the  Paris  office  received 
more  than  a  thousand  individual  requests  for  news  of  the 
doughboys.  Almost  literally  these  came  in  floodtides ;  but 
none  was  ignored  or  forgotten.  It  made  little  difference, 
either,  as  to  whether  any  of  them  was  addressed.  The  Red 
Cross  cleared  its  mail  with  a  good  deal  of  efficiency  and 
promptness.  Its  huge  central  postoffice  in  Paris  was  a 
marvel  of  precision  —  and  it  had  at  all  times  a  difficult  job. 
Yet  it  so  happened  that  it  was  in  charge  of  a  man  without 
any  previous  experience  in  such  a  task  —  Senator  Henry 
Brevoort  Kane,  of  Rhode  Island.  It  chanced  that  Senator 
Kane  displayed  an  immediate  adaptability  for  the  job  — 
and  with  this,  combined  with  great  patience  and  persist- 
ence, he  made  a  real  success  of  it. 

Perhaps  the  most  satisfactory  part  of  the  searcher's  job 
was  in  many  ways  the  search  for  missing  men  —  by  inter- 
viewing the  boys  in  the  hospitals  about  their  friends  and  in- 
timates, getting  tremendously  tiny  details  about  these  in 
camp  or  in  battle,  or  even  in  the  hospitals  themselves,  and 
from  these  details  evolving  the  web  of  evidence  —  Conan 
Doyle  or  E.  Phillips  Oppenheim  could  hardly  have  had  a 
more  fascinating  time  of  it  than  did  some  of  our  Red  Cross 
women  in  unraveling  the  tangle  of  confusion  which  they 
found  wound  about  this  boy  or  that,  or  the  other  fellow. 
Many  an  agonizing  situation,  indeed,  was  cleared  up 
through  the  efforts  of  these  men.  And  such  times  were  al- 
most the  sole  relief  from  a  task  that-  frequently  was  dreary 
and  almost  always  distressing. 

If  you  would  the  better  understand  the  real  task  that 
these  women  faced,  permit  me  to  quote  from  a  letter  written 
by  one  of  them : 

"  The  most  entertaining  part  of  my  work  is  writing  let- 
ters home  for  the  wounded  boys.  In  answer  to  my  letters 
the  replies  that  come  back  are  more  than  adequate  reward. 
The  letters  come  from  farmhouses  in  Vermont,  from  fac- 
tory towns  in  Connecticut,  from  busy  Massachusetts  cities, 
and  from  lonely  Western  ranches.  They  are  pathetic,  sad, 


"  PACK  UP  YOUR  TROUBLES  "  247 

funny ;  but  all  of  them  are  overflowing  with  surprises  and 
gratitude  for  the  person  in  the  mysterious  '  over  there ' 
who  had  taken  the  trouble  to  visit  and  write  home  for  her 
'  particular  boy  '  after  he  was  wounded.  These  letters  for 
the  boys  were  usually  written  to  a  woman  —  mothers,  sis- 
ters, or  t  girls  '  the  favorites  first,  of  course,  although  oc- 
casionally '  aunty  '  or  t  teacher  '  came  in  for  a  message  of 
reassurance. 

"  The  first  letter  I  had  to  write  was  for  a  boy  who  had 
lost  his  right  eye.  He  wanted  me  to  write  his  girl,  whose 
photographs  I  had  seen  several  times.  She  had  very  fluffy 
hair  and  usually  seemed  to  stand  in  an  apple  orchard.  Af- 
ter this  he  made  a  rather  staggering  suggestion :  Would  I 
please  read  all  of  Alice's  letters  so  that  I  should  know  what 
kind  of  a  girl  she  was  and  so  answer  her  letters  better! 
Realizing  that  a  Bed  Cross  worker  should  flinch  at  nothing 
and  trying  not  to  think  of  Alice's  feelings  in  the  matter,  I 
took  the  letters  out  of  a  bag  at  the  head  of  his  bed  and 
plunged  into  the  first  one. 

"  To  my  intense  relief  they  all  began  '  Dear  Bill/  and 
ended  '  Your  true  friend,  Alice/  Her  only  reference  to 
matters  of  the  heart  was  the  hope  that  he  would  not  fall  in 
love  with  any  of  those  pretty  Red  Cross  nurses  over  there. 
For  the  most  part  Alice  seemed  to  prefer  impersonal  topics, 
such  as  the  potato  crop,  the  new  class,  and  the  party  at 
the  grange  Saturday  night.  Bill  thought  she  was  a  mighty 
fine  writer  and,  I  think,  was  a  little  worried  lest  I  be  un- 
able to  compose  a  letter  worthy  of  her.  He  was  worried, 
too,  about  the  best  way  to  tell  her  that  he  had  lost  an  eye. 
'  You  know,  I  don't  care.  The  left  one  is  working  better 
than  it  ever  did  and  I  know  it  won't  make  no  difference  in 
the  way  she  thinks  of  me,  but  she'll  feel  pretty  bad  for  me, 
I  know  that,  and  I  want  you  to  please  tell  her  about  it  real 
gentle.'  We  finally  decided  to  tell  her  in  this  letter 
that  he  had  been  seriously  injured  in  his  right  eye  and 
then,  in  the  next  letter,  which  he  would  write  himself,  he 
would  tell  her  it  was  gone. 


248  WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

"  In  due  time  I  received  a  grateful  note  from  Alice  in  a 
very  long,  elegant,  and  exceedingly  narrow  envelope  inclos- 
ing a  correspondence  card  covered  with  high-schoolish- 
girlish  writing.  '  Thank  you  so  much/  she  wrote,  '  for 
your  letter  giving  me  news  of  Bill,  who  I  was  getting  so 
anxious  about,  as  I  had  not  heard  from  him  for  so  long. 
I  am  glad  he  is  getting  better  and  that  he  really  is  not 
suffering.' 

"  Another  grateful  letter  came  from  the  mother  of 
Michael  Holihan.  Mike  had  been  badly  wounded  and  at 
first  no  one  thought  he  could  possibly  pull  through,  for 
he  had  a  piece  of  shrapnel  in  the  liver.  He  survived  the 
operation,  however,  and  became  very  anxious  to  write  his 
mother.  '  Now  you  just  please  write  her  what  I  tell  you/ 
he  said.  '  Mother  is  pretty  old  now  and  she  is  always 
worrying,  but  I  got  it  all  thought  out  just  what  I  am  going 
to  say  to  make  her  stop.'  This  is  what  he  dictated : 

"'Dear  Mother: 

" '  I  was  hurt  the  other  day  but  not  enough  to  keep  me  down 
very  long  and  I  am  as  well  as  ever  now.  They  certainly  do  use 
me  fine  in  this  hospital.  I  am  having  a  great  time.  Gee,  I 
am  a  happy  boy,  and  don't  you  worry  none  about  me,  mother. 

" l  Your  son, 

"  <  MIKE.'  " 

"  After  making  this  effort  he  lay  back  on  the  pillow  and 
shut  his  eyes  for  a  moment,  tired  out,  only  to  open  them 
anxiously  to  ask :  '  That'll  fix  her,  won't  it  ? 7  Apparently 
it  did  not  entirely  '  fix  her/  for  her  answer  came  back  to 
me  —  an  anxious  scrawl  —  i  I  received  your  letter  and, 
dear  Red  Cross  lady,  it  was  so  kind  of  you  to  write  when 
you  must  be  so  busy  and  let  me  know  how  my  son  was  get- 
ting along,  as  I  was  waiting  day  after  day  for  a  letter  from 
him  and  I  didn't  know  what  could  be  the  matter  as  he 
always  writes  regularly  like  the  good  son  he  is.  I  am 
worrying  day  and  night  and  even  if  Mike  did  say  I 
shouldn't  because  what  do  boys  know  about  it  if  they  are 


"PACK  UP  YOUR  TROUBLES"  249 

sick  or  well  and  my  Mike  would  say  that  lie  was  well  if  he 
could  only  lay  flat  on  his  back  and  look  at  the  ceiling  he 
would.  As  this  is  all  I  have  to  say,  I  will  bring  this  letter 
to  a  close.  Tell  Mike,  I  and  all  the  family  have  wrote 
him!5 

Our  Red  Cross  as  well  as  our  army  officers,  themselves, 
recognized  almost  from  the  beginning  that  an  untroubled 
soldier  always  is  the  best  soldier.  It  also  appreciated  —  as 
this  book  already  should  have  told  you  —  that  its  primary 
object  in  Europe  was  to  bring  the  utmost  comfort  and  relief 
to  America's  fighting  millions.  That  was  why,  in  the  early 
summer  of  1918,  it  issued  a  small  pamphlet  telling  the 
doughboy  to  "  pack  up  his  troubles  in  his  old  kit  bag  "  and 
to  hand  them  to  the  first  Red  Cross  representative  he  met. 
He  was  assured  that  there  was  no  worry  of  any  kind, 
either  on  the  one  side  of  the  ocean  or  the  other,  that  the 
Red  Cross  could  not  or  would  not  shoulder  for  him.  These 
pamphlets  were  printed  by  the  hundreds  of  thousands  and 
distributed  to  every  American  soldier  in  France.  And 
they  were  an  evidence  of  the  real  desire  of  the  great  organ- 
ization of  the  crimson  cross  to  make  itself  invaluable,  not 
alone  in  the  comparatively  few  large  ways  of  succor,  but  in 
an  almost  infinite  number  of  smaller  and  individual  ones. 
It  was  in  this  last  sort  of  help,  of  course,  that  the  Home 
Communication  Service  shone.  It  was  its  own  particular 
sort  of  a  job  to  take  from  the  harassed  minds  of  individual 
soldiers  their  individual  problems  —  as  varied  and  as  com- 
plicated as  the  temperaments  and  the  conditions  of  the 
doughboys,  themselves.  Take  a  single  instance : 

Here  was  a  man  who  was  owner  of  a  small  but  growing 
business  in  the  Mohawk  Valley  of  New  York  State.  When 
a  unit  was  being  recruited  near  Utica  and  a  call  for  volun- 
teers was  being  issued,  he  responded  —  with  instant 
promptness.  At  the  time  he  donned  the  khaki  the  two 
banks  in  the  little  town  from  which  he  came  held  notes 
against  his  business  for  a  sum  of  a  little  more  than  a  thou- 


250     WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

sand  dollars.     They  had  been  indorsed  by  his  brother,  a 
hard-working  farmer  of  the  valley. 

Before  this  boy  had  been  mobilized  he  arranged  to  have 
his  voung  wife  conduct  the  business  —  with  the  aid  of  his 
long-time  assistant.  The  banks  told  him  that  the  notes 
would,  in  no  event,  be  called  before  his  return  from  the 
service  of  his  country.  They  were  fairly  perfervid  in  their 
expressions  of  their  desires  for  patriotic  service,  and  the 
young  man  left  for  France,  his  mind  well  at  ease. 

His  first  letters  from  home  were  full  of  optimistic  com- 
fort. A  little  later,  however,  they  were  not  quite  so  serene. 
Finally  this  soldier  received  a  letter  from  his  wife  stating 
quite  frankly  and  without  reserve  that  the  two  banks  had 
called  the  loans,  forced  his  brother  to  sell  part  of  his  farm 
stock,  and  then  had  sold  out  their  little  business. 

The  boy  in  khaki  was  furious.  A  week  before  he  had 
stuffed  into  his  musette  the  little  American  Eed  Cross  book- 
let which  told  of  that  organization's  sincere  desire  to  help 
the  individual  American  soldier  who  found  himself  in 
trouble.  "  I'll  take  them  at  their  word,"  thought  he  and 
immediately  sought  out  the  Eed  Cross  man  with  his  unit, 
and  to  him  spilled  the  entire  story.  The  Eed  Cross  man 
boiled.  He  was  not  a  young  man  —  being  a  bit  too  old  for 
regular  army  service,  he  had  taken  the  Eed  Cross  way  as 
being  the  best  for  him  to  serve  his  country  —  and  he  had 
heard  stories  of  that  sort  before,  and  decided  to  take  prompt 
action  on  this  one. 

It  so  happened  that  there  were  some  pretty  big  American 
bankers  on  the  American  Eed  Cross  staff  over  there  in 
France.  When  this  incident  was  rushed  through  to  them 
—  with  vast  promptness  —  they,  too,  took  action.  They 
did  not  even  wait  for  the  mails,  but  cabled  the  main  facts 
of  the  story  to  the  secretary  of  the  American  Bankers'  As- 
sociation, saying  that  the  proofs  were  coming  on  by  post,  but 
requesting  immediate  action.  A  representative  of  the  As- 
sociation took  the  first  train  up  into  central  New  York  and, 
through  a  personal  investigation  of  the  books  of  the  two 


"PACK  UP  YOUR  TROUBLES"  251 

banks,  quickly  verified  the  incident  —  in  every  detail. 
After  that  he  promptly  returned  to  New  York  city  and, 
placing  the  matter  before  the  executive  committee  of  the 
Bankers'  Association,  asked  that  justice  be  quickly  done. 
It  was.  The  two  miserly  and  hypocritical  banking  insti- 
tutions were  forced  to  return  the  young  soldier's  business  to 
his  wife  and  to  pay  back  the  brother  the  money  which  they 
had  taken  from  him.  After  which  they  were  both  kicked 
out  of  the  national  association. 

Along  with  the  pamphlet  advising  the  doughboy  to  pack 
up  his  troubles  in  his  old  kit  bag  and  then  carry  them  to 
the  nearest  Red  Cross  man  or  woman,  there  was  prepared 
a  poster  originated  by  a  man  out  in  the  Middle  West,  who 
because  of  his  understanding  affection  for  boys  was  par- 
ticularly well  qualified  to  prepare  it.  It  was  used  to  pla- 
card Brest  and  some  other  port  towns.  As  I  recall  it,  it 
read  something  like  this : 

AMERICAN  SOLDIER  AND  SAILOR 

Are  you  worried  about  anything  back  home;  your  wife, 
children,  mother,  insurance,  allotments,  taxes,  business  affairs, 
wills,  powers  of  attorney,  or  any  personal  or  family  troubles  of 
a  private  nature? 

THE  AMERICAN  RED  CROSS  HOME  SERVICE  MEN 

will  help  you  by  cable,  telegraph,  letter  —  assisted  by  forty 
million  members  of  the  Red  Cross  at  home.  Information  Free. 

Troubles  ?  The  American  doughboy  seemed  to  have  all 
the  troubles  that  the  poster  catalogued  —  and  then  some 
more.  The  response  to  the  poster  and  the  pamphlet  was 
immediate.  Soldiers  sought  out  the  American  Red  Cross 
Home  Communication  people  all  over  France.  At  Brest 
the  first  office  was  in  a  tent  near  Camp  Pontanzen.  Later 
two  offices  were  established.  One,  for  the  sailors,  was  lo- 
cated in  Brest  itself,  and  fairly  accessible  to  the  landing 
stages.  Another  was  located  in  a  stone  barracks  that  had 
been  builded  by  the  great  Napoleon.  This  office  not  having 


252,     WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

an  outside  door  available  to  passers-by,  wooden  steps  were 
built  up  the  wall  to  a  French  window.  Another  set  of 
steps  was  affixed  to  the  inner  wall  and  led  right  down  to 
the  desk  of  the  Red  Cross  representative.  Eventually  this 
work  at  just  this  one  point  became  so  great  in  volume  that 
four  of  these  offices  were  pressed  into  service. 

"  What  does  Home  Service  really  do  for  a  man  ?  "  asked 
a  magazine  woman  who  was  "  doing  "  France  for  her  pub- 
lication at  one  of  these  offices.  The  answer  to  her  inquiry 
was  definite. 

"  It  does  everything,"  they  told  her,  "  from  giving  a  sol- 
dier a  needle  and  thread  to  letting  our  tears  mingle  with 
his  between  sobs  when  he  tells  us  of  his  home  troubles." 

Upon  the  request  of  our  men,  wills  in  proper  form  were 
drawn  up  by  Red  Cross  attorneys  and  forwarded  to  the 
men's  families  in  this  country.  There  were  men  with 
wives  not  only  in  the  United  States,  but  in  every  corner 
of  the  world  —  in  Russia,  in  Assyria,  in  Italy,  for  in- 
stance —  who  wished  to  be  assured  that  their  allotments 
from  the  government  were  being  delivered.  During  the 
influenza  epidemic  here  and  at  a  time  when  the  flames  of 
a  forest  fire  were  winging  their  way  across  great  spaces  in 
our  West,  the  American  Red  Cross  offices  in  Paris  were 
besieged  with  tragic  appeals  for  immediate  information 
from  home. 

In  some  of  the  army  divisions  the  movements  of  troops 
were  so  sudden  and  so  uncertain  that  mail  was  badly  de- 
layed.    Then  the  doughboys  begged  our  Red  Cross  for  re- 
ports from  home  and  our  Red  Cross  furnished  them  — 
through  its  service  here. 

"  Our  visitor  found  daddy  and  your  wife  and  baby  at 
luncheon,"  read  one  of  these  reports  from  America. 
"  They  had  roast  chicken,  stewed  tomatoes,  mashed  pota- 
toes, hot  bread,  and  jam.  .  .  .  Your  wife  is  teaching 

school.  .  .  .  The   B family   has  moved.  .  .  .  Your 

mother  has  one  boarder  and  the  crops  are  fine.  .  .  .  Willie 
and  Carrie  are  going  to  move  away  in  the  spring." 


"PACK  UP  YOUR  TROUBLES"  253 

Can  you  imagine  what  such  a  report  might  mean  to  a 
man  who  had  not  heard  from  home  in  over  five  months  ? 
There  were  many  such.  There  were  times  when  men  — 
American  fighting  men  —  "  went  over  the  top  "  with  ach- 
ing hearts  for  some  one  who  faced  a  particularly  difficult 
problem  of  life  back  here  at  home.  Then  it  was  that  the 
Ked  Cross  did  not  hesitate  to  use  the  cable.  It  is  hardly 
necessary  to  emphasize  the  relief  which  the  following  ex- 
change of  messages  must  have  meant  to  some  one  fighting 
man  in  our  khaki : 

PARIS,  August  6,  1918. 
To  AMCROSS,  Washington: 

Report  concerning  confinement,  Mrs.  Harold  W ,  Rural 

Free  Delivery  Five,  H ,  Penn. 

WASHINGTON,  August  14, 1918. 
To  AMCROSS,  Paris: 

Answering    Inquiry    No. :   Mother    and    baby    son    three 

months  old  well  and  happy. 

In  this  instance  the  worried  fighter  was  an  officer  —  a 
captain  of  infantry.  During  the  time  which  elapsed  be- 
tween the  two  cablegrams  he  was  wounded  and  the  answer 
found  him  in  a  hospital,  side  by  side  with  a  French  blesse. 
A  Red  Cross  searcher  acted  as  interpreter  for  their  felici- 
tations and  in  her  official  report  of  the  incident  included 
this  notation : 

"  Captain  W was  much  improved  as  a  result  of  the 

good  news.  He  is  sitting  up  and  eating  roast  chicken  to- 
day. He  says  the  American  Red  Cross  has  cured  him." 

The  Red  Cross  representatives  here  in  America  could  not 
enter  a  home  unless  they  were  welcome ;  neither  could  they 
force  their  way  into  the  hearts  of  men.  They  were  com- 
pelled to  wait  until  their  help  was  sought.  The  growing 
mental  depression  of  a  certain  major  of  a  fighting  division 
during  those  tense  months  of  the  midsummer  of  1918  did 
not  escape  the  attention  of  the  Ajnerican  Red  Cross  man  at- 
tached to  that  division.  Suddenly  the  man,  who  had  been 
marked  because  of  his  poise,  became  taciturn  —  isolated 


254     WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

himself.  A  reference  to  the  Ried  Cross  Home  Service  which 
its  division  worker  tactfully  introduced  into  the  table  talk 
at  the  mess  at  which  both  sat,  however,  did  elicit  some 
trivial  rejoinder  from  the  man  with  the  golden  oakleaf  upon 
his  shoulder ;  while  the  following  day  that  same  major  wrote 
a  letter  to  the  Red  Cross  man  —  and  bared  the  reason  for 
his  most  obvious  melancholy. 

It  seemed  that  back  here  in  the  United  States  he  had  a 
little  son,  from  whom  he  had  received  no  word  whatsoever 
in  more  than  six  months.  The  child  was  with  the  major's 
divorced  wife,  and  his  father  was  more  than  anxious  to 
know  if  he  was  regularly  playing  out  of  doors,  if  he  was 
receiving  his  father's  allotment,  and  if  he  was  buying  the 
promised  Thrift  Stamp  each  week.  The  army  man  already 
had  his  second  golden  service  stripe  and  greatly  feared  that 
his  little  son  might  be  beginning  to  forget  him. 

Under  conditions  such  as  these,  visiting  the  boy  was  a 
diplomatic  mission  indeed.  Finally  it  was  intrusted  to 
the  wife  of  an  army  officer.  And  because  army  officers' 
wives  are  usually  achieved  diplomats  if  not  born  ones,  the 
ultimate  result  came  in  weekly  letters  from  the  boy,  which 
not  only  greatly  relieved  his  father's  mind  but  greatly  in- 
creased the  bonds  of  affection  between  the  two.  The 
Greatest  Mother  in  the  World  is  never  above  diplomacy  — 
which  is,  perhaps,  just  another  way  of  expressing  tact  and 
gentleness. 

There  were  many,  many  occasions,  too,  when  the  rela- 
tives at  home  depended  upon  that  selfsame  diplomacy  of 
hers  to  tell  the  disagreeable  stories  of  losses  or  perhaps  to 
prepare  the  boys  overseas  to  face  an  empty  chair  in  the 
family  circle.  There  was  one  particularly  fearful  mo- 
ment when  a  brilliant  young  officer  had  to  be  told  that  the 
reason  why  his  young  wife  had  ceased  to  write  was  because 
she  had  gone  insane  and  specialists  believed  that  she  could 
not  recover.  Boys  were  driven  to  Eed  Cross  offices  by 
hidden  affairs  that  flayed  them  hideously  and  of  which 
they  wished  to  purge  themselves.  Some  wanted  to  set  old 


"PACK  UP  YOUR  TROUBLES"  255 

wrongs  right.  Others  had  fallen  blindly  into  the  hands  of 
the  unscrupulous  and  had  only  fully  awakened  to  see  their 
folly  after  they  actually  were  upon  the  battlefields  of 
France.  Then  there  were  the  softer  phases  of  life  —  the 
shy  letters  and  the  blushing  visitors  who  wished  to  have  a 
marriage  arranged  with  Therese  or  Jeanne  of  the  black 
eyes  and  the  delicate  oval  face.  I  remember  one  of  our 
boys  who  had  fallen  in  love  with  a  girl  in  Nancy.  Theirs 
was  a  courtship  of  unspoken  love,  unless  soft  glances  and 
gentle  caresses  do  indeed  speak  more  loudly  than  mere 
words;  for  they  had  no  easy  bond  of  a  common  tongue. 
His  French  was  doughboy  French,  which  was  hardly 
French  at  all,  and  her  English  was  limited.  So  that  after 
he  had  gone  on  to  the  Rhine  and  the  letter  came  from  her 
to  him  in  the  delicate  hand  that  the  sisters  at  the  convent 
had  taught,  he  needs  must  seek  out  Red  Cross  Home  Com- 
munication and  intrust  to  it  the  task  of  uncommon  delicacy, 
which  it  fulfilled  to  the  complete  delight  and  satisfaction 
of  both  of  them.  For  how  could  any  mother,  let  alone  the 
Greatest  Mother  in  the  World,  blind  her  eyes  entirely  to 
love? 

She  apparently  had  no  intention  of  doing  any  such  thing. 
For  how  about  that  good-looking  doughboy  from  down  in 
the  Ozark  country  somewhere,  who  arrived  in  Paris  on  a 
day  in  the  autumn  of  1918  with  the  express  intention  of 
matrimony,  if  only  he  knew  where  he  could  get  the  license  ? 
French  laws  are  rather  fussy  and  explicit  in  such  matters. 
Some  one  suggested  the  Home  Service  Bureau  of  the  Amer- 
ican Red  Cross  to  the  boy.  He  found  his  way  quickly  to  it 
—  with  little  Marie,  or  whatever  her  name  really  was,  hang- 
ing on  his  arm.  A  Red  Cross  man  prayerfully  guided  the 
pair  through  the  legal  mazes  of  the  situation.  First  they 
went  to  a  law  office  in  the  Avenue  de  V Opera  where  the 
necessary  papers  were  made  out ;  then  the  procession 
solemnly  moved  to  the  office  of  the  United  States  Vice  Con- 
sul at  ISTo.  1  Rue  des  Italiens,  where  the  signature  of  the 
American  official  representative  was  duly  affixed  to  each  of 


256  WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

the  papers;  after  which  to  the  foreign  office,  where  the 
French  went  through  all  the  elaborate  processes  of  sealings 
and  signatures  which  they  seem  to  love  so  dearly,  and  then 
—  the  work  of  Mother  Red  Cross  was  finished.  They  were 
quite  ready  for  the  offices  of  the  Church. 

With  the  signing  of  the  armistice  all  this  work  was 
greatly  increased  —  was,  in  fact,  doubled  and  nearly 
trebled.  When  a  man  was  fighting  his  physical  needs 
seemingly  were  paramount ;  but  once  off  the  field,  the  wor- 
ries that  lurked  in  his  subconscious  mind  seemed  to  rise 
quickly  to  the  surface.  He  then  recalled  that  long  inter- 
val since  last  he  heard  from  home.  That  troubled  him,  and 
he  turned  to  the  Eed  Cross  —  those  pamphlets  and  posters 
did  have  a  tremendous  effect.  And  if  he  had  no  definite 
troubles  over  here,  such  as  those  we  have  just  seen,  he  was 
apt  to  be  just  plain  hungry  for  a  sight  of  the  home  —  and 
the  loved  ones  that  it  held. 

It  was  in  answer  to  a  demand  such  as  this  last  that  a 
Red  Cross  representative  right  here  in  the  United  States 
took  her  motor  car  and  drove  for  a  half  day  out  to  see  a 
family  of  whose  very  existence  she  had  never  before  even 
heard ;  and,  as  a  result  of  her  call,  wrote  back  a  letter  from 
which  the  following  excerpts  are  taken : 

"  I  want  to  tell  you  about  a  never-to-be-forgotten  trip  that 
I  took  the  other  day  out  to  see  a  one  hundred  per  cent 
patriot;  an  American  mother  who  has  three  sons  in  the 
service.  The  home  is  one  of  the  coziest,  homiest,  friend- 
liest places  you  can  imagine;  one  story,  with  that  cool 
spacious  plan  of  construction  that  makes  you  want  to  get  a 
book,  capture  a  chair  on  the  wide,  comfortable  porch,  and 
forget  the  world  and  its  dizzy  rush ;  a  great  sweep  of  lawn 
and  with  some  handsome  Hereford  calves  browsing  in  one 
direction  and  a  cluster  of  shade  trees  nearer  the  house. 

"  The  hills  surrounding  the  house  make  a  lovely  view  and 
all  were  covered  with  grazing  stock,  also  the  fine  Hereford 
cattle  for  which  the  place  is  known.  But  the  best  part  of 
the  home  is  the  dear  little  woman  who  hung  a  service  flag 


"PACK  UP  YOUR  TROUBLES"  257 

in  the  window  with  the  name  of  a  boy  under  each  of  the 
three  stars.  She  is  the  type  of  mother  that  draws  every 
one  to  her;  tender,  sensible,  capable,  broad-minded,  and 
with  a  shrewd  sense  of  humor  that  keeps  things  going  and 
makes  life  worth  living  for  the  entire  household. 

"  She  took  us  to  a  roomy  side  porch  where  her  sewing 
unit  of  the  Eed  Cross  meets  each  Tuesday.  A  marvelous 
amount  of  work  has  been  turned  out  in  that  side  porch,  and 
I'll  wager  a  dollar  to  a  doughnut  that  I  know  the  moving 
spirit  of  the  workers.  Off  in  a  big,  cool  parlor  bedroom 
there  were  stacked  up  several  perfectly  enchanting  '  crazy 
quilts ?  made  by  these  same  busy  women  at  odd  moments. 
These  are  ready  to  be  sent  to  Serbia  or  they  may  be  sold 
at  auction  for  the  benefit  of  the  Red  Cross. 

"  We  saw  pictures  of  each  boy  in  the  service  —  one  in 
the  navy,  one  in  the  heavy  artillery,  and  Milton,  whom  we 
all  hope  is  not  in  the  hospital  by  now.  Each  boy  had  in 
his  eyes  the  same  intrepid  look  that  the  mother  has  —  one 
can  tell  that  they  made  good  soldiers.  Knowing  how  busy 
farm  folk  are,  we  reluctantly  took  our  leave  after  seeing  all 
these  interesting  things  and,  as  we  swung  out  into  the  coun- 
try lane,  we  looked  back  and  there  stood  the  mother  waving 
and  smiling  —  the  very  best  soldier  of  them  all." 

Can  you  not  see  how  very  simple  it  all  was  —  how  very 
human,  too?  As  you  saw  in  one  of  the  earlier  chapters 
of  this  book,  a  fairly  formal  and  elaborate  plan  of  organ- 
ization had  been  laid  out  for  all  this  work;  but,  perhaps 
because  war  after  all,  is  hardly  more  than  a  series  of  vast 
emergencies,  the  American  Red  Cross  searchers,  either  in 
the  field  or  in  the  hospitals,  could  hardly  confine  them- 
selves to  any  mere  routine  of  clerical  organization  or  work 
in  the  great  task  that  was  thrust  upon  them.  The  unex- 
pected was  forever  upon  them. 

As  a  single  instance  of  this  take  the  time  when,  in  the 
Verdun  sector  and  in  the  hottest  days  of  fighting  that  the 
American  Army  found  there,  so  many  demands  were  made 


258     WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

upon  our  Red  Cross  by  the  officers  and  men  of  the  A.  E.  ~F. 
for  the  purchase  of  necessities  in  Paris  that  a  definite  shop- 
ping service  quite  naturally  evolved  itself  out  of  the  situa- 
tion. The  man  who  initiated  that  service  raced  a  motor 
car  from  Verdun  to  the  Paris  headquarters  in  order  to 
secure  the  materials  necessary  for  its  inauguration.  For 
when  the  American  Red  Cross  made  up  its  mind  to  do  a 
thing,  it  did  it  —  and  pretty  quickly  too. 

So  it  went  —  a  service  complicatedly  simple,  if  I  may 
so  express  it.  For,  despite  its  own  batteries  of 
typewriters  and  card  indexes,  there  was,  at  almost  all  times, 
that  modicum  of  human  sympathy  that  tempered  the  cold- 
ness of  mere  system  and  glorified  what  might  otherwise 
have  been  a  mere  job  of  mechanical  routine  into  a  tremen- 
dously human  and  tender  thing.  The  men  and  girls  of  the 
Home  Communication  Service  had  a  task  of  real  worth. 
Of  a  truth  it  was  social  service  —  of  the  most  delicate 
nature.  It  included  at  all  times  not  only  the  study  of  the 
physical  needs  of  the  soldier  or  sailor,  but  also  at  many 
times  that  of  his  mental  needs  as  well.  In  reality,  it  be- 
came a  large  part  of  the  scheme  of  preserving  and  enlarging 
the  morale  of  the  A.  E.  F.  Every  time  a  soldier  was  freed 
of  endless,  nagging  worry,  he  became  a  better  soldier  and 
so  just  that  much  more  strength  was  added  to  the  growing 
certainty  of  victory. 


CHAPTEE  XI 

WHEN   JOHNNY   CAME   MARCHING   HOME 

ON  November  11,  1918,  the  armistice  was  signed  and 
the  fighting  of  the  Great  War  ceased  —  almost  as 
abruptly  as  it  had  begun.  And  the  ebb  tide  of  American 
roops  from  Europe  back  to  the  United  States  began ;  almost 
at  once.  For  a  time  it  was  an  almost  imperceptible  tide; 
in  the  following  month  but  75,000  soldiers  all  told  — 
officers  and  enlisted  men  —  were  received  through  the  port 
of  New  York,  at  all  times  the  nation's  chief  war  gateway ; 
yet  this  was  but  the  beginning.  Each  month  of  the  early 
half  of  1919  registered  an  increase  of  this  human  tide 
inflowing  as  against  the  preceding  months,  until  May,  with 
311,830  troops  received  home,  finally  beat,  by  some  5,000 
men,  the  record  outgoing  month  of  July,  1918,  when  under 
the  terrific  pressure  induced  by  the  continued  German 
drive,  306,731  officers  and  men  had  been  dispatched  from 
these  shores.  Yet  June,  1919,  overtopped  May.  In  that 
month  342,686  troops  passed  not  only  under  the  shadow 
of  the  beloved  statue  of  Liberty,  but  also  into  the  friendly 
and  welcoming  ports  of  Boston,  Newport  News,  and 
Charleston,  while  the  Secretary  of  War  promised  that  the 
midsummer  months  that  were  immediately  to  follow  would 
break  the  June  record.  A  promise  which  was  fulfilled. 

Long  before  the  signing  of  the  armistice,  Pershing  had 
ruled  that  the  work  of  the  American  Eed  Cross  with  the 
well  men  of  the  A.  E.  E.  was  specifically  to  be  limited  to 
them  while  they  were  en  route  from  one  point  to  another  — 
along  the  lines  of  communication,  as  you  already  have  seen 
in  an  earlier  chapter.  To  the  Young  Men's  Christian 
Association  was  intrusted  the  chief  burden  of  caring  for 

them  in  their  more  or  less  permanent  camps.     This  meant 

259 


260  WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

for  our  Eed  Cross  in  the  final  months  of  the  war  —  before 
peace  was  actually  signed  and  declared  —  a  task  almost 
exactly  like  that  which  had  confronted  it  in  its  very  first 
months  of  war  experience  in  France.  The  stations  along 
the  railroad  lines  of  eastern  France,  Luxembourg,  and  the 
Moselle  Valley  —  the  lines  of  communication  between  our 
French  base  ports  and  the  occupied  districts  of  the  German 
states  —  offered  to  the  American  Eed  Cross  the  very  same 
canteen  problems  as  had  once  faced  it  at  Chalons-sur-Marne 
and  fipernay.  Treves  and  Coblenz  were  hardly  different 
from  either  of  these  —  save  perhaps  in  their  increased  size. 

Because  Coblenz  is  rather  more  closely  connected  in  the 
mind  of  the  average  American  with  our  Army  of  Occupa- 
tion, let  us  begin  with  it,  here  and  now.  It  was,  in  fact, 
the  easternmost  outpost  of  the  work  of  our  Red  Cross  with 
our  army  over  there.  There  the  lines  of  communication 
officially  began,  and  ran  up  the  railway  which  ascends  the 
beautiful  but  extremely  tortuous  valley  of  the  Moselle. 
And  where  the  lines  of  communication  began  —  in  the 
great  railroad  station  of  Coblenz  —  the  American  Red 
Cross  also  began.  It  had  two  canteens  in  that  station ;  one 
just  off  the  main  waiting  room,  and  the  other,  for  the  con- 
venience of  troops  who  were  merely  halted  in  the  train 
shed  of  the  station  while  going  to  and  from  the  other 
American  mobilization  centers  in  that  Rhine  bridgehead, 
right  on  the  biggest  and  the  longest  of  the  train  platforms. 
Both  were  busy  canteens ;  never  more  so,  however,  than  just 
before  10  :30  o'clock  in  the  morning,  which  was  the  stated 
hour  for  the  departure  of  the  daily  leave-train  toward  the 
border  lines  of  France.  Then  it  was  the  Red  Cross  coffee 
and  sandwiches,  tobacco  and  chewing  gum  were  in  greatest 
demand ;  for  the  long  leave-train  boasted  no  such  luxury  as 
dining  cars,  and  there  was  scarce  enough  time  at  the  noon- 
day stop  at  Treves  for  one  to  avail  oneself  of  the  lunch- 
room facilities  in  the  station  there. 

Yet  Treves  for  the  American  Red  Cross  was  a  far,  far 
more  important  point  than  Coblenz.  It  was  the  head- 


WHEN  JOHNNY  CAME  MARCHING  HOME      261 

quarters  of  all  its  work  in  Germany,  and  boasted  in  addi- 
tion to  the  large  American  Eed  Cross  canteens  in  each  of  the 
two  railroad  stations,  on  either  bank  of  the  Moselle,  and  the 
recreation  huts  at  the  base  hospitals  —  for  that  matter, 
there  were  also  recreation  huts  at  the  base  hospitals  in  and 
about  Coblenz  —  well-equipped  clubs  for  both  enlisted  men 
and  officers.  Of  these  the  club  for  the  enlisted  men  —  for 
the  rank  and  file  of  doughboy  —  quite  properly  was  the  best 
equipped. 

In  the  beginning  it  had  been  one  of  those  large  combina- 
tion beer  gardens  and  music  halls  that  always  have  been 
so  very  dear  to  the  heart  of  the  German.  It  was  the  very 
sort  of  plant  that  could  be,  and  was,  quickly  adapted  to  the 
uses  of  a  really 'big  group  of  men.  Its  main  bierhalle  made 
a  corking  dining  room  for  the  doughboys.  The  meals  kept 
pace  with  the  apartment.  Three  times  a  day  they  ap- 
peared —  feeding  daily  from  600  to  1,600  boys  —  and  they 
were  American  meals  —  in  fact,  for  the  most  part  com- 
posed of  American  food  products  —  meats  from  Chicago, 
butter  and  cheese  from  New  York  State,  flour  from  Minne- 
sota, and  the  like.  For  each  of  these  a  flat  charge  of  two 
marks  —  at  the  rate  of  exchange  then  prevailing,  about 
eighteen  cents  —  was  made.  But  if  a  doughboy  could  not 
or  would  not  pay,  no  questions  were  asked.  The  Treves 
Enlisted  Men's  Club  which  the  American  Red  Cross  gave 
the  A.  E.  F.  was  not  a  commercial  enterprise.  It  was  run 
by  an  organization  whose  funds  were  the  gift  of  the  Ameri- 
can people  —  given  and  given  freely  in  order  that  their  boys 
in  khaki  might  have  every  comfort  that  money  might 
provide. 

The  great  high-ceilinged  Jialle  held  more  than  a  restau- 
rant. It  was  a  reading  room  as  well,  stocked  with  many 
hundreds  of  books  and  magazines.  In  fact  a  branch  of  the 
American  Library  Association  operated  —  and  operated 
very  successfully  —  a  small  traveling  loan  library  in  one 
of  the  smaller  rooms  of  the  club.  Upon  the  walls  of  the 
vast  room  were  pictures  and  many  maps  —  maps  of  the 


262  WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

valley  of  the  Moselle,  of  that  of  the  Rhine,  of  the  Saar 
basin,  of  the  operations  in  France.  These  last  held  much 
fascination  for  the  doughboys.  The  most  of  them  were  of 
divisions  which  had  led  in  the  active  and  hard  fighting,  and 
the  tiny  flags  and  the  blue-chalk  marks  on  the  operation 
maps  were  in  reality  placed  there  by  their  own  efforts  - 
but  a  few  weeks  and  months  before.  It  was  real  fun  to 
fight  the  old  actions  over  and  over  again  —  this  time  with 
talk  and  a  pointing  stick. 

There  were,  of  course,  such  fundamental  conveniences 
for  roaming  doughboys  as  baths,  a  bootblack  and  a  barber 
shop  —  this  last  equipped  with  chairs  which  the  boys  them- 
selves invented  and  constructed ;  a  plain  stout  wooden  arm- 
chair, into  the  back  of  which  a  board  —  not  unlike  an  old- 
fashioned  ironing  board  —  was  thrust  at  an  angle.  When 
turned  one  way  this  board  formed  just  the  proper  headrest 
for  a  shave;  in  the  other  direction  it  was  at  exactly  the 
right  angle  for  haircutting. 

For  the  Officers'  Club  of  our  Red  Cross  at  Treves,  the 
Casino  in  the  Kornmarkt,  the  heart  of  the  city,  was  taken 
'over.  The  fact  that  this  was  in  the  beginning  a  well- 
equipped  club  made  the  problem  of  its  adaption  a  very 
slight  one  indeed.  And  the  added  fact  that  officers  require, 
as  a  rule,  far  less  entertainment  than  the  enlisted  men  also 
simplified  its  operation.  As  it  was,  however,  the  officers 
were  usually  given  a  dance  or  a  show  each  week  —  in  the 
comfortable,  large  hall  of  the  Casino.  In  the  Enlisted 
Men's  Club  there  was  hardly  a  night,  however,  without 
some  sort  of  an  entertainment  in  its  Jialle',  and  the  vast 
placed  packed  to  the  very  doors. 

The  next  stop  after  Treves  in  the  eastbound  journey 
from  the  Rhine  of  the  man  in  khaki  was  usually  Nancy. 
And  here  there  were  not  only  canteen  facilities  at  the  rail- 
road station,  but  a  regular  Red  Cross  hotel  —  situated  in 
the  Place  Stanislas,  in  the  very  heart  of  the  town.  In 
other  days  this  had  been  the  Grand  Hotel,  and  the  open 


If 


.5  * 

GO 

3s 


S     2  a 


WHEN  JOHNNY  CAME  MARCHING  HOME   26S 

square  that  it  faced  has  long  been  known  as  one  of  the 
handsomest  in  all  France.  In  fact,  Nancy  itself  is  one  of 
the  loveliest  of  all  French  towns;  and  despite  the  almost 
constant  aerial  bombardments  that  were  visited  upon  it, 
escaped  with  comparatively  minor  damage. 

The  Red  Cross  hotel  there  was  opened  on  September  30, 
1918,  and  closed  on  the  tenth  of  April  of  the  following 
spring  —  had  eighty-eight  rooms,  capable  of  accommodat- 
ing one  hundred  guests,  and  two  dormitories  capable  of 
providing  for  some  forty  more.  The  room  charges  were 
invariably  five  francs  for  a  room  —  with  the  exception  of 
one,  usually  reserved  for  generals  or  other  big  wigs  — 
which  rented  at  eight  francs  a  night.  For  the  dormitory 
beds  an  even  charge  of  two  francs  (forty  cents)  nightly 
was  made,  while  in  the  frequent  event  of  all  these  regular 
accommodations  of  the  hotel  being  engaged  and  the  neces- 
sity arising  of  placing  cots  in  its  broad  hallways,  no  charge 
whatsoever  was  made  for  these  emergency  accommodations. 

For  the  excellent  meals  —  served  with  the  fullness  of  a 
good  old-fashioned  Yankee  tavern  —  a  progressive  charge 
of  four  francs  for  breakfast,  five  francs  for  lunch,  and  six 
francs  for  dinner  was  made.  Surely  no  one  could  fairly 
object  to  the  restaurant  prices,  which,  even  in  France  in 
war-time  stress,  ranged  from  eighty  cents  to  a  dollar  and 
twenty !  In  fact  it  was  a  bonanza  for  the  American  officers 
who  formed  the  chief  patrons  of  the  place  —  although  a 
bit  of  thoughtfulness  on  the  part  of  some  one  had  provided 
this  particular  hostelry  with  a  dormitory  of  twelve  beds 
and  a  single  room  with  three  which  was  held  reserved  for 
American  women  war  workers ;  an  attention  which  was  tre- 
mendously appreciated  by  them. 

Eleven  miles  distant  from  !Nancy  was  Toul ;  but  Toul  we 
have  already  visited  in  the  pages  of  this  book.  We  know 
already  the  comfortable  accommodations  that  the  traveler 
in  khaki  found  in  the  group  of  hotels  and  canteens  which 
our  Red  Cross  operated  there.  There  were  many  of  these, 


264     WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

even  outside  of  Paris ;  one  of  the  largest  the  tavern  at  the 
badly  overcrowded  city  of  Bordeaux.  That  tavern  had 
heen  little  to  boast  of,  in  the  beginning.  It  was  an  ancient 
inn  indeed ;  but  good  taste  —  the  purchase  of  some  few 
dozen  yards  of  cretonne,  and  cleanliness  —  the  unrelenting 
use  of  mop  and  broom  and  soap  —  had  accomplished  won- 
ders with  it.  There  were  others  of  these  American  Red 
Cross  hotels  in  France  during  the  fighting  period  —  the 
ones  at  Dijon,  Is-sur-Tille,  and  Marseilles  were  particularly 
popular.  But  it  was  in  Paris  itself  that  the  Red  Cross  ac- 
commodations for  the  itinerant  doughboy  in  the  final 
months  of  the  war,  as  in  the  long  and  difficult  half  year  that 
intervened  between  the  signing  of  the  armistice  and  the 
signing  of  peace,  reached  their  highest  development.  In 
the  beginning  these  had  taken  form  in  canteens  which  were 
operated  night  and  day  at  each  of  the  important  railroad 
stations.  These  were  all  right  —  so  far  as  they  went. 
Their  one-franc  or  seventy-five  centime  meals  were  wonder- 
ful indeed.  I  have  eaten  in  these  canteens  many  times  my- 
self —  and  always  eaten  well.  I  have  been  seated  between 
a  doughboy  from  North  Carolina  and  one  from  North  Da- 
kota and  been  served  by  a  society  woman  in  steel-gray  uni- 
form —  a  woman  whose  very  name  was  a  thing  to  be  em- 
blazoned in  the  biggest  headline  type  of  the  New  York 
newspapers,  but  who  was  working  week  in  and  week  out 
harder  than  the  girls  in  busy  restaurants  back  home  are 
usually  wont  to  work. 

If  you  would  see  these  canteens  as  they  really  worked, 
gaze  upon  them  through  the  eyes  of  a  brilliant  newspaper 
woman  from  San  Francisco,  who  took  the  time  and  the 
trouble  to  make  a  thorough  study  of  them.  She  wrote 

"  A  brown  puddle  of  coffee  was  spreading  over  the  white 
oilcloth.  The  girl  from  home  sopped  it  up  with  her  dish 
towel.  She  brushed  away  messy  fragments  of  food  and 
bread  crumbs.  Again  there  were  few  vacant  places  for 
American  soldiers  on  the  benches  at  the  long  table  in  the 
canteen  at  the  Gare  St.  Lazare. 


WHEN  JOHNNY  CAME  MARCHING  HOME   265 

"  The  canteen,  one  of  a  circuit  of  thirteen  maintained  by 
the  Red  Cross  in  Paris,  had  formerly  been  the  corner  of  a 
baggage  room  in  one  of  the  most  important  Paris  terminals. 
The  concrete  floor  bruised  her  feet.  She  was  as  conscious 
of  them  as  Alice  in  Wonderland  who  discovered  her  own 
directly  beneath  her  chin  after  she  nibbled  the  magic  toad- 
stool. The  girl  was  tired,  but  she  smiled. 

"  It  was  really  a  smile  within  a  smile.  There  was  one 
on  her  lips  which  seemed  to  sparkle  and  glance,  waking  re- 
sponsive smiles  on  the  faces  of  the  men.  At  once  the  gob 
who  was  born  down  in  Virginia  and  had  trained  at  Nor- 
folk, decided  that  she  was  from  his  own  South.  The  six- 
foot  doughboy  from  California  knew  that  she  came  from 
some  small  town  in  the  Sierras.  To  each  of  the  men  she 
suddenly  represented  home. 

"  That  smile  stays  in  place  each  day  until  she  reaches  her 
room  in  a  pension  across  the  Seine  on  the  Rue  Beaux  Arts. 
There,  closing  the  door  upon  the  world  with  its  constant 
pageant  of  uniformed  men  who  seem  forever  hungry  and 
thirsty,  she  lets  her  smile  fade  away  for  the  first  time  that 
day. 

"  The  smile  within  is  tucked  away  in  her  heart  with  the 
memory  of  agonizing  moments  aboard  an  ocean  liner  when 
she  felt  her  exalted  desire  for  service  ebbing  away  because 
she  feared  she  would  not  be  needed.  Needed !  Now  she 
wonders  who  else  could  have  managed  so  tactfully  the  boy 
who  had  been  at  sea  for  one  year  and  discovered  that  he  had 
forgotten  how  to  talk  to  an  American  woman.  His  diffi- 
dence was  undermined  with  another  dish  of  rice  pudding 
and  an  extra  doughnut.  He  became  a  regular  boarder  at 
the  canteen  where  breakfast  costs  nine  cents  and  any  other 
man's  size  meal  may  be  had  for  thirteen  cents.  His  leave 
ended  in  a  half  day  of  excited  shopping  for  which  his 
younger  sister  will  always  be  grateful. 

"  The  girl  from  home  had  been  one  of  those  solemn 
creatures  who  was  called  to  the  Overseas  Club  in  New  York 
for  service  abroad.  She  was  one  of  hundreds  who  had 


266  WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

clinched  their  own  faith  in  their  ideals  by  pledging  such 
service.  It  had  heen  a  wrench,  saying  good-bye  at  the  sta- 
tion in  the  Middle  West.  There  were  no  boys  in  the 
family,  and  her  father  had  made  a  funny  little  joke  which 
betrayed  his  pride  about  '  hanging  out  a  service  flag  now.' 
Armed  with  interminable  lists  which  called  for  supplies 
for  twelve  months,  she  bought  her  equipment.  All  the 
time  she  was  saying  to  herself 

"  i  I  am  ready  to  give  all  of  my  youth  and  my  strength 
to  the  cause  and  to  hasten  victory/ 

"  Then  the  armistice  was  signed.  The  wireless  in- 
strument sang  with  the  message.  There  was  a  celebration. 
The  ship  remained  dark,  still  sliding  through  the  nights 
warily,  but  her  next  trip  would  be  made  with  decks  ablaze 
and  portholes  open.  The  war  was  ended.  It  seemed  to 
the  girl  that  in  the  silence  of  the  aftermath  she  could  hear 
once  more  the  wings  of  freedom  throbbing  above  the 
world.  She  was  glad  and  she  was  sorry.  Her  fear  was 
that  after  all  the  Eed  Cross  would  not  need  her  because  she 
came  too  late. 

"  Canteen  service  —  she  pictured  the  work  minus  the 
tonic  of  danger  as  a  social  job.  Dressed  in  a  blue  smock 
and  white  coif  she  would  bid  a  graceful  farewell  to  the  A. 
E.  F.  as  it  filtered  out  of  Europe.  JSTow  she  smiles. 
Needed  ?  Her  fingers  are  scarred  and  she  wonders  if  she 
ever  will  be  able  to  pour  one  thousand  bowls  of  coffee  from 
the  gigantic  white  procelain  pitcher  without  blistering  her 
hands. 

"  Each  day  she  looks  at  the  line  of  men  jostling  one  an- 
other at  the  door.  She  listens  to  their  interminable  ques- 
tions and  comes  to  the  full  realization  that  she  is  one  of  the 
most  important  people  in  Paris,  one  of  two  hundred  girls 
feeding  thirty-five  thousand  soldiers  daily. 

"  As  some  workers  leaving  for  home  after  more  than  a 
year  of  service  tell  of  making  sandwiches  under  shell  fire, 
of  sleeping  by  the  roadside  in  the  woods  to  fool  the  boche 
flyers  who  bombed  the  Red  Cross  buildings,  she  still  feels 


WHEN  JOHNNY  CAME  MARCHING  HOME   267 

the  sly  nip  of  envy.  But  soldiers  do  not  cease  to  be  soldiers 
and  heroes  when  the  war  is  done. 

"  Other  puddles  formed  on  the  table  and  she  mopped 
them  up.  She  had  used  three  towels  during  her  eight- 
hour  shift.  A  soldier,  one  of  the  thousands  passing  daily 
through  the  six  Paris  stations  on  their  way  home,  journey- 
ing to  leave  areas,  going  to  join  the  Army  of  Occupation  or 
assigned  to  duty  in  the  city,  called  to  her. 

"  '  Sister,  I  want  to  show  you  something,7  he  said,  and 
unwrapped  a  highly  decorative  circlet  of  aluminum.  It 
was  a  napkin  ring  which  he  had  bought  from  a  poilu  who 
made  it  of  scraps  from  the  battlefield.  There  was  an  elab- 
orate monogram  engraved  on  a  small  copper  shield. 

"  '  For  my  mother/  he  explained.  '  If  you  don't  think 
it  is  good  enough  I  will  get  something  else.' 

"  At  once  fifty  rival  souvenirs  were  produced.  Men 
came  from  other  tables  to  exhibit  their  own.  There  was 
the  real  collector  who  bemoaned  the  theft  of  a  *  belt  made 
by  a  Russian  prisoner  in  Germany  and  decorated  with  the 
buttons  of  every  army  in  the  world  including  the  fire  de- 
partment of  Holland.' 

"  One  of  the  new  arrivals  had  hands  stiffened  from  re- 
cently healed  wounds.  She  brought  his  plate  of  baked 
beans,  roast  meat,  potatoes,  a  bowl  of  coffee,  and  pudding. 
A  young  Canadian  with  flaming,  rosy  cheeks  divided  the 
last  doughnut  with  his  friend,  the  Anzac.  Crullers  are  the 
greatest  influence  in  canteen  for  the  general  friendliness 
among  soldiers  of  different  armies.  A  League  of  Nations 
could  be  founded  upon  them  if  negotiations  were  left  to 
the  privates  about  the  oilcloth-covered  tables. 

"  The  boy  with  the  crippled  hands  protested  that  he  did 
not  want  to  accept  a  dinner  for  which  there  was  so  little 
charge. 

"  '  Say,  Miss,'  he  said,  '  I  can  pay  more.  I  don't  have 
to  be  sponging.' 

"  '  You  have  folks  in  the  states  ? '  she  asked.     He  had. 

"  '  Then,'  she  explained,  '  they  are  the  ones  who  sup- 


268  WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

port  the  American  Red  Cross.  When  you  come  here  it  is 
because  the  folks  asked  you  in  to  dinner.' 

"  '  But  I  haven't  any  folks/  announced  a  sailor. 

"  e  I'm  from  the  States,  so  I  am  your  folks/  she  retorted, 
'  and  the  Red  Cross  is  your  folks.  We  invite  you  to  three 
meals  a  day  as  long  as  you  stay  in  Paris.' 

"  (  You  are  my  folks/  said  the  boy  who  was  only  a 
youngster,  '  and  you  sure  look  like  home  to  me.' 

"  The  soldier  with  the  crippled  hands  wanted  to  describe 
his  wounds.  Like  hundreds  of  others  he  began  with  the 
sensations  in  the  field,  '  when  he  got  his.'  Deftly  as  she 
had  learned  to  do  during  hundreds  of  such  recitals,  she 
cleaned  up  the  table  and  stacked  the  plates  without  seeming 
to  interrupt.  It  was  three  o'clock,  the  end  of  her  day. 
She  had  reported  at  seven  in  the  morning.  The  following 
week  she  would  report  with  the  other  members  of  the  staff 
at  eleven  at  night  because  the  doors  of  a  canteen  must 
never  be  closed. 

"  The  boy  talked  on.  He  was  explaining  homesickness, 
the  sort  which  drives  men  from  cafes  where  the  food  is 
unfamiliar  and  the  names  on  the  menus  cannot  be  trans- 
lated into  '  doughboy  French '  to  such  places  as  the  little 
room  in  the  Gare  St.  Lazare. 

"  She  discovered  that  her  habitual  posture  was  with  arms 
akimbo  and  hands  spread  out  over  her  hips.  This  position 
seemed  to  rest  the  ache  in  her  shoulders.  Through  her 
memory  flashed  pictures  of  waitresses  in  station  eating 
houses  who  stood  that  way  while  tourists  fought  for  twenty 
minutes'  worth  of  ham  and  eggs  between  trains. 

"  Red  Cross  after-war  canteens  were  a  social  center  for 
pretty  idlers  in  smart  blue  smocks? 

"  The  smile  on  her  lips  never  faltered  and  the  hidden 
smile  in  her  heart  became  a  little  song  of  laughter. 

"  She  was  i  helping'  —  helping  in  an  '  eating  joint/ 
some  of  the  boys  called  it.  But  it  was  an  eating  joint  with 
a  soul." 

What  more  could  one  ask  of  an  eating-house  ? 


WHEN  JOHNNY  CAME  MARCHING  HOME   269 

.From  the  canteen  at  the  railroad  terminals  —  which 
were  all  right  so  far  as  they  went  —  it  was  an  easy  step  of 
transition  to  the  establishment  of  hotels  for  the  enlisted 
men  in  the  accessible  parts  of  Paris  —  until  there  was  a 
total  of  six  of  these  last,  in  addition  to  the  five  railway 
station  canteens  —  at  Gare  St.  Lazare,  Gare  du  Nord,  Gare 
d'Orsay,  Gare  d'Orleans,  and  Gare  Montparnasse.  The 
winter-time  hotels  were  in  the  Avenue  Victor  Emanuel, 
Rue  Traversiere,  Rue  la  Victoire,  Rue  St.  Hyacinthe,  and 
the  Rue  du  Bac.  These  were  all,  in  the  beginning,  small 
Parisian  taverns  of  the  pension  type,  which  were  rather 
quickly  and  easily  adapted  to  their  war-time  uses. 

The  great  difficulty  with  the  first  five  of  these  American 
Red  Cross  doughboy  hotels  was  their  extreme  popularity. 
They  could  hardly  keep  pace  with  the  demands  made  upon 
them  —  in  the  last  weeks  that  preceded  and  immediately 
following  the  signing  of  the  armistice ;  while,  with  the  com- 
ing of  springtime  and  the  granting  of  wholesale  leaves  of  ab- 
sence by  the  army,  an  immediate  and  most  pressing  problem 
confronted  the  American  Red  Cross  in  Paris.  The  boys 
were  coming  into  the  town  —  almost  literally  in  whole  regi- 
ments, and  the  provisions  for  their  housing  and  entertain- 
ment there  were  woefully  inadequate  —  to  say  the  least. 
Not  only  were  these  accommodations,  as  furnished  by  the 
French,  inadequate  and  poor,  but  the  charges  for  them 
often  were  outrageous. 

Yet  to  furnish  hotel  accommodations  in  the  big  town, 
even  of  the  crudest  sort,  for  a  thousand  —  perhaps  two 
thousand  —  doughboys  a  night  was  no  small  problem. 
There  were  no  more  hotels,  large  or  small,  available  for 
commandeering  in  Paris ;  the  various  allied  peace  commis- 
sions had  completely  exhausted  the  supply.  Yet  our  Red 
Cross,  accustomed  by  this  time  to  tackling  big  problems  — 
and  the  solution  of  this  was,  after  all,  but  part  of  the  day's 
work,  and  because  there  were  no  more  hotels  or  apartment 
houses  or  dormitories  or  barracks  of  any  sort  whatsoever 
available  in  the  city  of  more  than  two  million  folks  —  our 


270     WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

Eed  Cross  decided  to  build  a  hotel.  And  so  did  —  almost 
overnight. 

It  was  a  summer  hotel,  that  super-tavern  for  our  dough- 
boys, and  it  stood  squarely  in  the  center  of  that  famous 
Parisian  playground,  the  Champs  de  Mars  —  and  almost 
within  stone  throw  of  the  Eiffel  Tower  and  the  Ecole 
Militaire.  To  create  it  several  dozen  long  barracks  —  like 
American  Red  Cross  standard  khaki  tents  —  were  erected 
in  a  carefully  planned  pattern.  Underneath  these  were 
builded  wooden  floors  and  they  were  furnished  with  electric 
lights  and  running  water.  A  summer  hotel  could  not  have 
been  more  comfortable ;  at  least  few  of  them  are. 

The  Tent  City,  as  it  quickly  became  known,  was  opened 
about  March  4,  1919,  with  bed  accommodations  for  1,400 
men,  while  preparations  were  quickly  made  to  increase  this 
capacity  by  another  five  hundred,  for  the  latest  and  the 
biggest  of  American  Red  Cross  hotels  in  Paris  had  leaped 
into  instant  popularity.  Between  six  and  nine-thirty  in 
the  morning  and  ten-thirty  and  midnight  in  the  evening, 
the  boys  would  come  streaming  in  to  the  registry  desk,  like 
commercial  travelers  into  a  popular  hostelry  in  New  York 
or  Philadelphia  or  Chicago.  They  would  sleep  —  perhaps 
for  the  first  time  in  many,  many  months  —  in  muslin  sheets. 
And  these  were  as  immaculate  as  those  of  any  first-class 
hotel  in  the  States. 

There  was  no  charge  whatsoever  for  these  dormitory  ac- 
commodations. For  the  meals  —  simple  but  good  and 
plentiful  —  the  normal  price  of  fifty  centimes  (nine  or  ten 
cents)  was  asked,  but  never  demanded;  while  merely  for 
the  asking  any  of  our  boys  in  khaki  could  have  at  any  hour 
the  famous  Red  Cross  sandwiches  of  ham  or  salmon  or 
beef  mixture  or  jam  —  chocolate  or  coffee  or  lemonade 
a-plenty  to  wash  it  down. 

Definite  provision  was  made  for  their  amusement ;  there 
were  "  rubberneck  wagons  "  to  take  them  afield  to  the  won- 
derful and  enduring  tourist  sights  of  Paris  and  her  en- 
virons —  and  at  the  Tent  City  itself  a  plenitude  of  shows 


WHEN  JOHNNY  CAME  MARCHING  HOME   271 


and  dances  as  well  as  the  more  quiet  comfort  of  books  or 
magazines,  or  the  privilege  and  opportunity  of  writing  a 
letter  home. 

"  Of  what  use  these  last  in  Paris  ?  "  you  ask. 

Your  point  is  well  taken.  I  would  have  taken  it  my- 
self —  before  I  first  went  to  the  Tent  City.  When  I  did 
it  was  a  glorious  April  day,  the  sun  shone  with  an  unaccus- 
tomed springtime  brilliancy  over  Paris,  and  yet  the  air  was 
bracing  and  fit  for  endeavor  of  every  sort.  Yet  the  big 
reading  room  tent  of  the  Red  Cross  hotel  in  the  Champs  de 
Mars  was  completely  filled  —  with  sailor  boys  or  boys  in 
khaki  reading  the  books  or  paper  most  liked  by  them.  The 
sight  astonished  me.  Could  these  boys  —  each  on  a  leave 
of  but  three  short  days  —  be  blind  to  the  wonders  of  Paris  1 
Or  was  their  favorite  author  particularly  alluring  that 
week  ?  I  decided  to  ask  one  of  them  about  it, 

"  I  saw  Paris  yesterday  —  Notre  Dame,  the  Pantheon, 
Napoleon's  Tomb,  the  Opera  House,  the  Louvre,  the 
Follies  —  the  whole  blame  business.  It's  some  hike.  But 
I  did  it.  An'  to-day  I'm  perfectly  satisfied  to  sit  here  and 
read  these  guys  a-telling  of  how  they  would  have  fought  the 
war." 

Of  such  was  the  nature  of  the  American  doughboy. 

Just  as  it  was  necessary  at  Treves  and  Bordeaux  and 
elsewhere  —  because  of  the  very  volume  of  the  problem  — 
to  separate  his  entertainment  from  that  of  his  officers,  so  it 
became  necessary  to  effect  a  similar  solution  in  Paris ;  for 
the  officer  is  quite  as  much  a  ward  of  our  Red  Cross  as  the 
doughboy,  himself.  And  so  early  in  the  solution  of  this  en- 
tire great  problem  a  superb  home  in  the  very  heart  of  Paris 
—  the  town  residence  of  the  Prince  of  Monaco  at  No.  4 
Avenue  Gabriel  and  just  a  step  from  the  Place  de  la  Con- 
corde —  was  secured  and  set  aside  as  an  American  Red 
Cross  Officers'  Club.  Lovely  as  this  was,  and  seemingly 
more  than  generous  in  its  accommodations,  these  were  soon 
overwhelmed  by  the  demands  placed  upon  them,  and  steps 


272  WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

were  taken  toward  finding  a  real  officers'  hotel  for  the  men 
of  the  A.  E.  F.  when  they  should  come  to  Paris. 

These  led  to  the  leasing  of  the  Hotel  Louvre,  at  the  head 
of  the  Avenue  de  1' Opera  and  almost  adjoining  the  Com- 
edie  Franchise,  the  American  University  Union,  and  the 
Louvre.  After  being  rapidly  redecorated  and  otherwise 
transformed  to  meet  the  necessities  of  the  A.  E.  F.  it  was 
reopened  on  the  sixth  of  January,  1919,  as  the  American 
Officers'  Hotel  in  charge  of  Mr.  L.  M.  Boomer,  the  direct- 
ing genius  of  several  large  New  York  hotels.  Mr.  Boomer 
brought  to  the  Eed  Cross  a  great  practical  hotel  experience, 
and  the  house  under  his  management  quickly  attained  an 
overwhelming  success.  It  had,  in  the  first  instance,  been 
charmingly  adapted  to  its  new  uses.  Its  rather  stiff  and 
old-fashioned  interior  had  been  completely  transformed; 
there  was  all  through  the  building  an  indefinable  but  en- 
tirely unmistakable  home  atmosphere.  Our  American  of- 
ficers fairly  reveled  in  it. 

Into  this  setting  was  placed  good  operation  —  a  high- 
grade  American-operated  hotel,  if  you  please,  in  the  very 
heart  of  Paris  and  all  her  stout  traditions.  Petit  dejeuners 
begone!  They  are  indeed  starvation  diet  for  a  hungry 
Yank.  The  breakfast  in  the  American  Officers'  Hotel, 
which  our  Red  Cross  set  up  and  operated,  cost  a  uniform 
five  francs  (one  dollar)  and  had  the  substantial  quality  of 
a  regular  up-and-doing  tavern  on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic. 

Before  we  rest,  here  are  three  typical  bills  of  fare  of  a 
single  ordinary  day  in  this  A.  E.  C.-A.  E.  F.  establish- 
ment. The  day  was  the  nineteenth  of  April,  1919,  and 
the  three  meals  were  as  follows: 

BREAKFAST        Five  Francs  — ($1.00). 

Bananas 

Quaker    Oats 

Eggs  and  Bacon 

Griddle  Cakes  with  Sirup 

Confiture 
Coffee,  Cocoa,  or  Chocolate 


WHEN  JOHNNY  CAME  MARCHING  HOME   273 

LUNCHEON         Eight  Francs — ($1.60). 
Oyster  Soup,  with  Okra 
Scollops  of  Veal,  Dewey 

Nouilles,  Milanaise 
Cold  Meats,  with  Jelly 

Russian  Salad 

Assorted  Eclairs        Raspberry  Ice  Cream 
Coffee 


DINNER  Ten  Francs  —($2.00) . 

Creme  St.  Cloud 

Rouget  Portugaise 

Roasted  Filet  of  Beet,  Cresson 

Pommes  Chateau        Endive  Flamandes 

Salade  de  Saison 

Candied  Fruits  Coffee  Ice  Cream 

Coffee 

Yet  the  charm  of  the  American  Officers7  Hotel  in  Paris 
rested  not  alone  in  the  real  excellence  of  its  cuisine,  nor 
in  the  comfort  of  its  cleanly  sleeping  rooms.  It  carried  its 
ideals  of  genuine  service  far  beyond  these  mere  fundamen- 
tals. It  recognized  the  almost  universal  Yankee  desire 
to  have  one's  shoes  shined  in  a  shop  and  so  set  up  a  regular 
American  boot-blacking  stand  in  one  of  its  side  corridors, 
a  thing  which  every  other  Parisian  hotel  would  have  told 
you  was  quite  impossible  of  accomplishment.  It  recog- 
nized the  inconvenience  of  tedious  waiting  and  long  queues 
at  the  box  office  of  the  Paris  theaters  by  setting  up  a  theater 
ticket  office  in  its  lobby,  which  made  no  extra  charge  for  the 
distinct  service  rendered.  Nor  was  there  a  charge  for  the 
services  of  Miss  Curtis,  the  charming  little  Red  Cross 
girl,  who  went  shopping  with  a  fellow  or  for  him,  and  who 
had  a  knack  of  getting  right  into  those  perplexing  Paris 
shops  and  getting  just  what  a  fellow  wanted  at  an  aston- 
ishingly low  price  —  for  Paris  in  war  times,  anyway. 
Her  range  of  experience  was  large;  from  the  man  with  a 
silver  star  on  each  shoulder  who  wanted  to  buy  a  modish 
evening  gown  for  his  wife  at  a  price  not  to  exceed  forty 
dollars,  to  the  chunky  Nevada  lieutenant  who  had  won 


274     WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

three  thousand  francs  at  "  redeye  "  on  the  preceding  even- 
ing and  was  anxious  to  blow  it  all  in  the  next  morning  in 
buying  souvenirs  for  mother.  With  both  she  did  her  best. 
Her  motto  was  that  of  the  successful  shop  keeper :  "  We 
aim  to  please." 

When  Mr.  Boomer  had  this  hotel  set  up  and  running  and 
turned  his  attention  to  some  other  housing  problems  of  our 
Red  Cross,  the  management  fell  to  Major  H.  C.  Eberhart, 
who  had  been  his  assistant  in  Paris  and  before  that  had 
been  affiliated  in  a  managerial  capacity  with  several  large 
American  houses.  He  carried  forward  the  job  so  well 
begun. 

With  the  slow  but  very  sure  movement  of  our  doughboys 
back  from  eastern  France  and  Germany  toward  the  base 
ports  along  the  westerly  rim  of  France,  where  they  were 
embarking  in  increasing  numbers  for  the  blessed  homeland, 
it  became  necessary  for  General  Pershing  to  establish  con- 
centration areas,  or  reservoir  camps,  well  back  from  the 
Atlantic  Coast  but  convenient  to  it.  By  far  the  largest 
and  most  important  of  these  was  in  the  neighborhood  of 
the  city  of  Le  Mans,  some  one  hundred  and  fifty  miles 
southwest  of  Paris,  which  meant  in  turn  that  what  was 
finally  destined  to  be  the  largest  of  the  canteens  of  our 
American  Eed  Cross  in  France  outside  of  Paris  was  the 
final  one  established.  It  was  known  as  the  American  Red 
Cross  Casual  Canteen  and,  situated  within  three  blocks  to 
the  east  of  the  railroad  station  at  Le  Mans,  was  a  genuine 
headquarters  for  all  the  American  soldiers  for  ten  or  fif- 
teen or  twenty  miles  roundabout.  And  in  the  bare  chance 
that  there  might  not  be  a  doughboy  who  had  chanced  to 
hear  of  it,  it  was  well  indicated  —  by  day,  by  a  huge 
sign  of  the  crimson  cross,  and  by  night  that  emblem  blazing 
forth  in  all  the  radiance  of  electricity. 

When  the  doors  were  finally  opened  —  about  the  middle 
of  March,  1919  —  there  were  sleeping  quarters  under  its 
hospitable  roof  for  250  enlisted  men  and  forty  officers. 


WHEN  JOHNNY  CAME  MARCHING  HOME   275 

In  the  canteen  portion  of  the  establishment,  200  men  could 
be  served  at  a  single  sitting;  in  all  500  at  each  of  the  three 
meals  a  day.  The  comforts  of  this  place  almost  approxi- 
mated those  of  a  hotel.  When  the  men  rose  from  their 
beds  in  the  morning  —  clean  sheets  and  towels  and  pillow- 
cases, of  course,  even  though  it  did  mean  that  the  Red 
Cross  had  to  establish  its  own  laundry  in  the  establish- 
ment —  they  could  step,  quickly  and  easily,  into  a  com- 
modious washroom  and  indulge,  if  they  so  chose,  in  a 
shower  bath.  Eighteen  showers  were  installed  —  for  their 
convenience.  It  represented  the  acme  of  Red  Cross 
service. 

Finally  the  beginning  of  the  end  for  the  average  dough- 
boy in  France  —  that  long  anticipated  and  seemingly 
never-arriving  day  of  departure  in  the  troopship  for  home. 

Our  Red  Cross  was  down  to  see  him  off  when  he  sailed. 
It  might  have  been  from  Brest  or  Bordeaux  or  St.  Nazaire 
that  he  took  his  departure  —  or  from  some  one  of  the  lesser 
ports  that  were  used  to  a  greater  or  less  extent.  That  made 
no  difference  to  the  American  Red  Cross.  It  was  part  of 
its  job  to  be  on  hand  whenever  and  wherever  the  boy  of  the 
A.  E.  F.  sailed  for  home  —  whether  it  was  Brest  or 
Vladivostok  or  Southampton  or  Marseilles. 

As  a  matter  of  real  and  actual  fact,  Brest  was  the 
most  used  of  all  the  embarkation  ports  for  the  journey 
home.  It  boasted  what  was  sometimes  called  "  the  most 
beautiful  canteen  in  France  "  which  had  been  builded  by 
our  Red  Cross,  with  the  generous  help  of  the  army  engi- 
neers. It  immediately  adjoined  the  embarkation  sheds, 
and  night  and  day  in  the  months  that  followed  the  sign- 
ing of  the  armistice,  it  was  supremely  busy  —  serving  the 
inevitable  cigarettes,  doughnuts,  chocolate,  and  other  hot 
drinks.  An  interesting  and  extremely  valuable  adjunct  to 
the  place  was  a  bakery,  with  a  capacity  of  twenty  thousand 
buns  a  day. 

The  enlisted  men's  rest  room,  with  its  bright  hangings 


276  WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

and  draperies,  its  cartoons  of  army  life  painted  upon  its 
wall  panels,  its  big  fireplace,  its  comfortable  settees, 
lounging  chairs,  and  tables  supplied  with  games,  maga- 
zines, and  writing  material,  held  especial  attraction  for 
the  doughboys.  In  all  the  mud  and  grime  of  the  dirty 
Port  du  Commerce  it  was  the  one  cheery  and  homelike 
place. 

I  told  in  an  earlier  chapter  of  the  American  Red  Cross 
canteen  at  Bassens,  just  across  the  Gironde  from  Bordeaux. 
It  is  enough  to  add  here  and  now  that  this  American-builded 
port  with  its  mile-long  Yankee  timber  pier  at  which  seven 
great  ships  might  be  berthed  simultaneously,  discharging 
or  loading  cargoes,  never  justified  its  worth  half  so  much 
as  in  the  days  after  the  armistice.  Thomas  Kane's  coffee 
attained  a  new  perfection  while  Miss  Susanne  Wills,  the 
Chicago  woman  who  was  directress  of  the  canteen  on  the 
pier,  and  her  fellow  workers  made  renewed  efforts  to  see 
that  the  boys  that  passed  through  the  canteen  had  every 
conceivable  comfort  —  and  then  some  others.  I,  myself, 
spent  a  half  day  questioning  them  as  to  these.  The  verdict 
to  the  questionings  was  unanimous.  It  generally  came  in 
the  form  of  a  grin  or  a  nod  of  the  head,  sometimes  merely 
in  a  pointing  gesture  to  the  crimson-crossed  comfort  bag, 
that  the  big  and  blushing  doughboy  carried  hung  upon 
his  wrist. 

For  the  sick  boy,  going  homeward  bound  from  all  the 
ports,  very  special  comfort  provisions  were  made  —  and 
rightly  so.  All  of  these  last  passed  through  the  Red  Cross 
infirmaries  on  the  embarkation  docks.  As  each  went  over 
the  gangway  he  was  questioned  as  to  his  equipment.  If 
he  was  short  a  mess  kit  or  a  cup,  a  fork,  a  knife,  a  spoon 
or  a  blanket,  the  deficiency  was  promptly  met ;  in  addition 
to  which  each  boy  was  given  a  pair  of  flannel  pajamas  and 
the  inevitable  comfort  bag,  with  its  toothbrush,  tooth 
paste,  wash  cloth,  bar  of  soap,  and  two  packages  of  cig- 


WHEN  JOHNNY  CAME  MARCHING  HOME      277 

arettes.  Books  and  magazines  also  went  upon  each  troop- 
ship, while  Red  Cross  nurses  accompanied  the  boys  on  to 
the  ships  and  saw  them  safely  settled  in  the  hospital  wards. 
~No  mere  cataloging  of  the  work  of  our  Eed  Cross  in  the 
embarkation  ports  can  ever  really  begin  to  tell  the  story 
of  the  fullness  of  its  service  there.  Charts  of  organiza- 
tion, details  of  operations,  pictures  of  the  surroundings 
go  just  so  far,  but  never  quite  far  enough  to  tell  of  the 
heart  interest  that  really  makes  service  anywhere  and 
everywhere.  Such  service  the  American  Eed  Cross  ren- 
dered all  across  the  face  of  France  —  and  nowhere  with 
more  strength  and  enthusiasm  than  in  those  final  moments 
of  the  doughboy  which  awaited  him  before  his  start  home. 
Have  I  not  already  told  you  that  our  Eed  Cross  over  there 
was  not  a  triumph  of  organization  —  or  anything  like  it  ? 
It  was  a  big  job  —  and  with  big  mistakes.  But  the  big- 
ness of  the  things  accomplished  so  far  outweighed  the  mis- 
takes that  they  can  well  be  forgotten ;  the  tremendous  net 
result  of  real  achievement  set  down  immutably  and  indis- 
putably as  a  real  triumph  of  our  American  individualism. 


CHAPTER  XII 

THE  GIRL  WHO  WENT  TO  WAS 

ON"  the  ship  that  bore  me  from  New  York  to  Europe  in 
the  first  week  of  December,  1918,  there  were  many 
war  workers  —  and  of  many  sorts  and  varieties.  We  had 
men  and  women  of  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.,  of  the  Y.  W.  C.  A., 
of  the  Jewish  Welfare  Board,  of  the  Knights  of  Columbus 
—  and  twenty-five  women  of  the  American  Red  Cross. 
And  so,  in  the  close-thrown  intimacy  of  shipboard,  one 
had  abundant  opportunity  to  study  this  personnel  at  rather 
short  range,  and  the  fact  that  our  ship,  which  had  been 
builded  for  South  African  traffic  rather  than  for  that  of 
the  North  Atlantic,  nearly  foundered  in  mid  ocean  only 
served  to  increase  the  opportunity. 

There  were  women  war  workers  of  nearly  every  age  and 
variety  in  that  motley  ship's  company.  There  were 
school-teachers  —  one  from  Portland,  Maine,  and  another 
from  Portland,  Oregon  —  stenographers,  clerks,  women  of 
real  social  distinction,  professional  women,  including  a 
well-known  actress  or  two,  and  girls  so  recently  out  of 
finishing  school  or  college  that  they  had  not  yet  attained 
their  full  places  in  the  sun.  Few  of  them  had  known  one 
another  before  they  had  embarked  upon  the  ship;  there 
was  a  certain  haziness  of  understanding  in  many  of  their 
minds  as  to  the  exact  work  that  was  to  be  allotted  to  them 
overseas.  A  large  percentage  of  the  women,  in  fact,  had 
never  before  crossed  the  Atlantic;  a  goodly  number  had 
not  even  seen  salt  water  before  this  voyage.  Yet  with  all 
this  uncertainty  there  was  no  timidity  —  no,  not  even 
when  the  great  December  storm  arose,  and  with  the  full- 
ness of  its  fury  lashed  itself  into  a  hurricane  the  like  of 

278 


THE  GIRL  WHO  WENT  TO  WAR  279 

which  our  captain,  who  had  crossed  the  ocean  a  hundred 
times  or  more,  had  not  seen.  And  when  the  fury  of  this 
storm  had  crashed  in  the  cabin  windows,  had  torn  the 
wheelhouse  away,  had  set  the  stout  ship  awash  and  the  pas- 
sengers to  bailing,  the  courage  and  serenity  of  these  Ameri- 
can women  remained  undisturbed.  They  suffered  great 
personal  discomforts,  yet  complained  not.  And  with  our 
national  felicity  for  an  emergency  organization  —  that 
sort  of  organization  really  is  part  and  parcel  of  our  indi- 
vidualism —  relieved  the  steward's  crew  at  night  and 
cooked  and  served  the  Sabbath  supper. 

There  were  women  in  uniform  on  our  ship  whose  mouths 
were  tightly  shut  in  the  grim  determination  of  service  — 
one  could  fairly  see  "  Z-E-A-L  "  written  in  unmistakable 
letters  upon  their  high  foreheads  —  and  there  were  girls 
who  fretted  about  the  appearance  of  the  curls  under  the 
edges  of  their  small  service  caps  and  who  coquetted  with 
the  young  British  aviators  returning  home  after  service  as 
instructors  on  the  flying  fields  here  in  the  United  States. 
Between  these  extremes  there  was  vast  range  and  variety. 
But  the  marvelous  part  of  it  all  was  that  all  of  them  - 
each  after  her  own  creed  or  fashion,  for  the  dominating 
quality  of  our  individualism  multiplies  geometrically  in 
the  case  of  our  American  womanhood  —  ranged  true  to 
any  test  that  might  be  put  upon  them.  The  storm  showed 
that.  I  did  not  have  the  personal  opportunity  of  seeing 
the  Red  Cross  girls  in  battle  service;  but  I  did  see  them 
in  the  canteens  in  the  hard,  hard  months  that  followed  the 
signing  of  the  armistice,  saw  them  in  the  wards  and  the 
recreation  huts  of  hospital  after  hospital,  saw  them,  too,  in 
Paris  headquarters,  working  under  very  difficult  conditions 
of  light  and  ventilation  —  living  of  every  sort  —  and  at 
manual  or  office  work  or  humdrum  dreariness.  The  girl 
in  uniform  who  sat  all  day  in  a  poorly  lighted  and  aired 
room  at  a  typewriter  or  a  filing  case  had  a  far  less  dram- 
atic or  poetic  job  than  the  traditional  Red  Cross  girl  who 
stands  at  a  battlefield  canteen  or  in  a  hospital  ward  holding 


280  WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

the  hand  of  some  good-looking  —  and  perhaps  marriage- 
able —  young  captain  or  colonel.  Yet  her  service  was  as 
real  as  uncomplaining  and  —  for  the  reasons  we  have  just 
seen  —  vastly  more  difficult. 

None  of  the  women's  work  over  there  was  easy  —  the 
romantic  girl  who  went  to  France  lured  on  by  the  dream 
pictures  of  some  artist-illustrator  as  to  the  dramatic  phases 
of  canteen  or  hospital  work  was  quickly  disillusionized. 
The  real  thing  was  vastly  different  from  the  picture.  A 
dirty  and  unshaven  doughboy  in  bed  or  standing  in  a  long 
queue  waiting  for  his  cigarettes  or  chocolate,  and  speaking 
Polish  or  Yiddish  when  he  came  to  them,  was  a  far,  far 
different  creature  from  the  young  wounded  officer  of  the 
picture  who  must  have  been  an  F.  F.  V.  or  at  least  from 
one  of  the  first  families  of  Baltimore  or  Philadelphia. 
And  the  hours!  They  were  fearfully  hard  —  to  put  it 
lightly.  Eight,  ten,  or  twelve  hours  at  a  stretch  was  a 
pretty  good  and  exhausting  test  of  a  girl's  vitality.  Nor 
was  this  all  of  the  job,  either.  Many  and  many  a  woman 
worker  of  the  Red  Cross  or,  for  that  matter,  the  Y.  M. 
C.  A.,  too,  has  stood  eight  or  ten  or  twelve  hours  on 
her  feet  in  a  canteen  and  then  has  ridden  twenty  or  thirty 
miles  in  a  truck  or  camionette  to  an  army  dance,  has  danced 
three  or  four  or  five  more  hours  with  soldier  boys  who, 
even  if  they  do  not  happen  to  be  born  dancers,  do  covet 
the  attention  and  interest  of  decent  girls,  and  has  returned 
to  only  a  few  hours  of  sleep,  before  the  long  turn  in  the 
canteen  once  again.  And  has  repeated  this  performance 
four  or  five  times  a  week.  For  what  ?  Because  she  was 
crazy  for  dancing  ?  Not  a  bit  of  it.  For  of  a  truth  they 
became  sick  of  dancing  —  "  fed  up  "  is  the  phrase  they 
frequently  used  when  they  spoke  of  it  at  all. 

"  I  feel  as  if  I  never  wanted  to  hear  an  orchestra 
again,"  one  of  them  told  me  one  day  as  I  stopped  at 
her  canteen  —  in  a  French  town  close  to  the  occupied  ter- 
ritory. "But  I  have  four  dates  already  for  next  week 
and  three  for  the  week  after.  Another  month  of  this 


THE  GIRL  WHO  WENT  TO  WAR  281 

sort  of  thing  and  I  shall  be  a  fit  candidate  for  a  rolling 
chair." 

"  Why  do  you  do  it  ?  "  I  ventured. 

"  Why  do  I  do  it  ?  "  she  repeated.  "  The  boys  need 
us.  Have  you  noticed  the  kind  of  girls  that  drift  up 
here  from  Paris  ?  If  you  have,  you  will  understand  why 
my  job  is  unending,  why  it  only  pauses  for  a  very  little 
while  indeed  at  night,  when  I  jump  into  my  bed  for  six 
or  seven  hours  of  well-earned  sleep." 

I  understood.  I  had  spent  an  evening  in  the  grand 
boulevards  of  Paris  and  had  watched  a  "  Y  "  girl,  under 
the  escort  of  a  member  of  the  American  Military  Police, 
save  foolish  doughboys  and  their  still  more  foolish  officers 
—  from  themselves.  In  a  few  minutes  after  ten  o'clock 
that  evening  an  overcrowded  hotel  of  one  of  our  largest 
American  war-relief  organizations  had  regretfully  turned 
away  sixteen  of  our  soldiers  and  in  this  time  there  were 
fifteen  French  girls  waiting  to  give  the  hospitality  that 
the  sadly  overburdened  hotel  had  been  compelled  to  refuse 
them.  No  wonder  that  our  Red  Cross  was  forced  into 
the  building  of  the  great  Tent  City  there  on  the  Champs  de 
Mars.  As  these  French  girls  of  the  Paris  streets  came  up 
to  the  doughboys  the  job  of  the  "  Y  "  girl  began.  In  a 
few  more  minutes  she  had  convinced  the  boys  that  it  was 
not  too  late  to  give  up  hope  of  securing  lodgings  in  over- 
crowded Paris;  and  was  quick  with  her  suggestions  as  to 
where  they  might  be  found.  It  was  not  a  pleasant  job.  I 
hardly  can  imagine  one  more  unpleasant.  But  the  girl 
had  her  reward,  in  the  looks  of  gratitude  which  the  dough- 
boys gave  her.  One  or  two  of  them  cried  like  babies. 

This  was  an  unusual  job  to  be  sure.  But  our  American 
Eed  Cross  also  was  filled  with  unusual  jobs  for  women 
as  well  as  for  men;  jobs  that  took  not  merely  endurance 
and  courage,  but  in  many,  many  cases  rare  wit  and  tact 
and  diplomacy,  and  these  were  rarely  lacking,  and  some- 
times came  where  they  were  least  expected. 


"282     WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

I  am  not  all  anxious  to  over-glorify  these  women.  It 
would  hardly  be  fair;  for,  after  all/  they  were  very 
human  indeed  —  witness  one  young  widow  on  our  ship 
to  Europe  who  not  merely  confessed  but  actually  boasted 
that  she  had  received  three  proposals  of  marriage  upon 
that  stormy  voyage.  And  one  little  secretary  girl  from  the 
Middle  West,  who  was  of  our  ship's  company,  wanted  to 
be  a  canteen  worker,  although  she  was  specifically  enrolled 
for  the  office  work  for  which  she  was  particularly  qualified, 
but  when  she  found  that  the  canteen  to  which  she  was  to 
be  assigned  was  located  in  a  lonely  railroad  junction  town 
in  the  middle  of  France,  demanded  that  she  be  sent  to 
Coblenz,  where  the  Army  of  Occupation  had  its  head- 
quarters; she  said  quite  frankly  that  she  did  not  want  to 
be  robbed  of  all  her  opportunities  of  meeting  the  nice 
young  officers  of  the  army.  She  was  very  human,  that 
.young  secretary,  and  eventually  she  got  to  Coblenz.  In- 
sistence counts.  And  she  was  both  insistent  and  consistent. 

But  at  the  Rhine  her  lot,  oddly  enough,  was  not  thrown 
in  with  officers  but  with  the  doughboys  —  the  enlisted 
men  of  our  most  amazing  army.  She  fed  them,  walked 
with  them,  danced  with  them,  wrote  their  letters,  and  finally 
began  to  understand.  And  so  slowly  but  surely  came  to 
the  fullness  of  her  real  value  to  the  country  that  she 
served. 

One  evening  she  dined  in  the  Y.  W.  0.  A.  hostess 
house  at  Coblenz  with  two  of  these  boys.  Left  alone,  she 
would  have  dined  by  herself.  She  was  tired,  very  tired. 
There  comes  the  hour  when  a  woman  worker  wearies  a 
bit  at  sight  of  a  ceaseless  file  of  chattering  and  khaki-clad 
men.  And  so  when  she  seated  herself  in  one  of  the  little 
dining  booths  of  the  "  Y.  W."  restaurant,  it  was  with  a 
silent  prayer  that  she  might  be  left  alone  —  just  that 
evening.  Her  prayer  was  not  granted.  A  big  doughboy 
came  and  sat  down  beside  her,  another  across  the  narrow 
table  from  her.  The  second  vouched  for  the  first. 


THE  GIRL  WHO  WENT  TO  WAR  283 

"You  will  like  Hank,"  said  he.  "He's  one  of  the 
livest  in  the  whole  First  Division.  He's  from  Waco, 
Texas,  and  say,  he's  the  best  gambler  in  the  whole  army." 

At  which  Hank  grinned  and  produced  a  huge  wad  of 
ten  and  twenty  and  fifty  and  hundred  franc  notes  from  his 
hip  pocket. 

"  Don't  you  let  him  string  you,  Miss  Tippitoes,"  said 
he,  "  but  if  ever  you  get  where  you  need  a  little  spare 
change  you  know  where  your  Uncle  Hank  is  to  be  found." 

He  called  her  "  Miss  Tippitoes  "  because  he  could  not 
remember  her  real  name  even  if  ever  it  had  been  given  to 
him.  But  he  had  danced  with  her  and  watched  her  dance, 
and  marveled.  And  well  might  he  have  marveled.  For 
if  I  were  to  give  you  Miss  Tippitoes'  real  name  you  might 
know  it  as  the  name  of  the  most  graceful  and  popular 
dancer  in  a  fashionable  suburb  of  Chicago. 

Hank  edged  closer  to  her.  It  was  in  the  crowded 
restaurant,  so  he  took  off  his  coat  and  unbuttoned  his 
blouse,  as  well  as  the  upper  buttons  of  his  undershirt. 
And  Tippitoes  stood  for  it  —  it  was  a  part  of  her  job 
and  she  knew  it  —  while  Hank  leaned  closer  to  her  and 
confided  some  of  his  troubles  —  they  were  troubles  com- 
mon to  so  many  of  the  doughboys. 

"  It's  a  dump  that  we're  billeted  in,  miss,"  said  he,"  and 
it's  all  the  fault  of  our  colonel  —  him  and  that  Red  Cross 
girl  he's  stuck  on.  Just  because  he's  got  a  mash  on  her 

he  had  the  regiment  moved  in  to  G .  But  I've  got  his 

number.  And  as  for  her  —  why,  that  girl  comes  from 
my  home  town.  I've  got  hers,  too." 

Tippitoes'  eyes  blazed.  She  could  have  lost  her  temper 
so  easily.  It  is  not  difficult  when  one  is  fagged  and  nerves 
begin  to  get  on  edge,  but  she  kept  her  patience. 

"  Don't  be  foolish,  young  man,"  said  she,  "  otherwise 
somebody  will  have  to  take  the  trouble  to  tell  you  that  a 
colonel  does  not  locate  his  regiment.  He  has  no  more  to 
say  about  where  you  shall  all  be  billeted  than  you  your- 


284:    WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

selves.  And  as  for  the  Red  Cross  girl,  she  is  in  the  same 
position.  Moreover,  your  remark  is  not  worthy  of  an 
American  soldier  —  and  a  gentleman." 

There  was  something  in  the  way  she  said  these  things 
-  no  type  may  ever  put  in  upon  paper  —  that,  in  the 
language  of  the  motion-picture  world,  "  registered."  In 
a  little  time  Hank  was  ashamed  of  himself,  and  with  <the 
innate  generosity  of  his  big,  uncouth  heart,  apologized  — 
like  a  gentleman  and  an  American  soldier. 

Ofttimes,  even  though  with  the  American  Army 
women  were  not  permitted  to  go  very  close  to  the  front 
line,  the  joh  the  Red  Cross  girl  was  fraught  with  much 
real  danger.  The  air  raid  was  too  frequent  and  too  deadly 
a  visitor  not  to  have  earned  an  awsome  respect  for  itself. 
The  tooth  marks  of  Big  Bertha  still  show  all  too  plainly 
as  horrid  scars  across  the  lovely  face  of  Paris  —  the  beauty 
of  the  world.  The  boche,  as  we  all  very  well  know,  did 
not  stop  his  long-distance  warfare  from  the  air  even  at 
the  sight  of  the  roofs  which  bore  crimson  crosses  and  so 
signified  that  they  were  hospitals  and,  under  every  condi- 
tion of  civilization  and  humanity,  exempt  from  attack. 
The  story  of  these  hospital  raids,  with  their  casualty  lists, 
not  merely  of  American  boys  already  sick  and  wounded, 
but  of  the  wounding  and  killing  of  the  men  and  women  who 
were  laboring  to  give  them  life  and  comfort,  is  already  a 
well-known  fact  of  record ;  yet  even  this  was  not  all.  Death 
never  seemed  far  away  in  those  hard  months  of  19 IT  and 
1918,  and  Death  was  no  respector,  either  of  persons  or  of 
uniforms  or  of  sex.  Upon  the  honor  roll  of  our  Red  Cross 
there  are  the  names  of  twenty-three  American  women, 
other  than  nurses,  who  made  the  supreme  sacrifice  for  their 
country. 

The  experiences  of  the  Red  Cross  girls  in  the  air  raids 
were  as  many  and  varied  as  the  girls  themselves.  That  of 
a  canteen  worker  at  Toul  was  fairly  typical.  She  had  been 
over  at  the  neighboring  city  of  Nancy  to  aid  in  one  of  the 


THE  GIRL  WHO  WENT  TO  WAR  285 

innumerable  soldiers7  dances  which  had  heen  given  there. 
In  the  middle  of  the  dance  it  had  suddenly  occurred  to 
her  chum  and  herself  that  neither  had  eaten  since  morning. 
A  young  lieutenant  had  taken  them  to  a  very  good  little 
restaurant  in  the  great  Place  Stanislas  that  all  through  the 
hard  days  of  the  war  held  to  a  long-time  reputation  of  real 
excellence,  and  had  insisted  that  they  order  a  dinner  of 
generous  proportions. 

Yet  before  their  soup  had  been  fairly  served  an  air 
raid  was  upon  them.  The  roar  of  the  planes  and  the  rattle 
of  cannonading  were  continuous.  Every  light  in  the  place 
went  out  instantly,  and  because  the  proprietor  insisted 
even  then  in  keeping  his  shades  and  shutters  tightly  drawn 
the  place  was  inky  black. 

"  What  did  you  do  ?  "  I  asked  her. 

"  What  did  we  do  ?  We  went  ahead  and  ate  our  din- 
ner. It  was  the  best  thing  we  could  do.  I  realized  for  the 
first  time  in  my  life  the  real  handicaps  of  the  blind.  I 
don't  see  how  they  ever  learn  to  eat  fried  chicken 
gracefully." 

.In  an  earlier  chapter  I  told  of  the  remarkable  work  done 
by  the  Smith  College  girls  at  the  crux  of  the  great  Ger- 
man drive.  It  was  impossible  in  that  chapter  to  tell 
all  of  the  sacrifice  and  the  devotion  shown  by  these  women 
—  the  most  of  them  from  five  to  fifteen  years  out  of 
college,  although  one  of  the  best  of  them  was  from  the 
class  of  1882  and  still  another  from  that  of  1917.  "  We 
were  an  unbaked  crew/'  one  of  them  admitted  quite 
frankly  to  me. 

Miss  Elizabeth  Bliss  was  typical  of  these  college  girls. 
A  long  time  after  Chateau-Thierry  they  were  all  working 
behind  the  lines  in  the  Argonne,  Miss  Bliss  herself  in 
charge  of  a  sanitary  train  for  the  Bed  Cross  from  the  rail- 
head back  to  the  base  hospital.  It  was  part  of  her  job  to 
work  up  to  midnight  and  then  be  called  at  three  o'clock 
in  the  morning  to  see  the  four  o'clock  train  start  off 


286     WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

with  its  wounded.  On  one  of  those  October  mornings, 
when  the  weather  was  a  little  worse  than  usual,  if  that 
could  be  possible,  she  exerted  a  perfectly  human  privilege 
and  decided  not  to  get  up. 

But  no  sooner  had  this  decision  been  made  than  the 
still,  small  voice  spoke  to  her. 

"  Can  you  afford  to  miss  even  one  day  ?  "  it  said  to  her. 

"  I'm  all  in.  I  just  can't  get  up,"  she  replied  to  the 
S.  S.  V. 

"  Can  you  afford  to  miss  —  even  one  day  ?  "  it  repeated. 

She  got  up  and  dressed  and  made  her  way  down  in  the 
rain  to  the  waiting  train.  As  she  went  into  the  long  hos- 
pital car  a  wounded  doughboy  raised  himself  on  one  elbow 
and  shouted  to  all  his  fellows: 

"  Hi,  fellows,  I  told  you  that  a  Red  Cross  girl  would  be 
here,  and  here  she  is.  I  told  you  she'd  come." 

"  Just  think  if  I  hadn't,"  says  Miss  Bliss  in  telling  of 
this  incident. 

When  life  back  of  the  front  was  not  dangerous  or  dra- 
matic, it  was  apt  to  be  plain  dreary.  There  is  not  usually 
much  drama  just  in  hard  wark.  Take  once  again  the 
case  of  Miss  Mary  Vail  Andress,  whom  we  found  in  charge 
of  the  canteen  at  Toul.  Miss  Andress  came  to  France 
on  the  twenty-fourth  of  August,  1917,  one  of  a  group  of 
seven  Red  Cross  women,  the  first  of  the  American  Red  Cross 
women  to  be  sent  over.  The  other  members  of  the  party 
were  Mrs.  Dickens,  Mrs.  Lawrence,  Miss  Frances  Mitchell 
(who  was  sent  to  the  newly  opened  canteen  at  fipernay), 
Miss  Rogers,  Miss  Andrews-,  and  Miss  Frances  Andrews, 
and  were  immediately  dispatched  to  Chalons.  For  a  short 
time  Miss  Andress  was  the  assistant  of  Henry  Wise  Miller, 
who  was  then  in  charge  of  canteen  work  in  France.  She, 
however,  enlisted  for  canteen  work  and  so  asked  Mr.  Miller 
to  be  allowed  to  go  into  the  field  and  was  sent  to  fipernay. 
From  there  she  went  back  to  Paris  and  on  to  Chantilly, 


THE  GIRL  WHO  WENT  TO  WAR  287 

where  she  prepared  a  home  for  girls  in  canteen  work. 
She  came  to  Toul  in  January,  1918,  and,  as  you  already 
know,  was  the  first  woman  worker  to  reach  that  important 
American  Army  headquarters. 

"  For  a  while  it  seemed  as  if  I  could  never  quite  get 
down  to  the  real  job,"  she  says  "  it  seemed  so  often  that 
something  new  broke  loose  and  always  just  at  the  wrong 
time.  While  we  were  working  to  get  the  first  canteen  es- 
tablished here  at  Toul  —  we  had  a  nurses'  club  in  mind 
at  the  time  —  word  came  from  the  hospital  over  there  back 
of  the  hill  that  the  Red  Cross  was  needed  there  to  help 
prepare  for  the  comfort  of  the  nurses  in  that  big  place. 
I  went  there  at  once  —  of  course.  Within  fifteen  minutes 
after  I  got  there  I  was  hanging  curtains  in  the  girls'  bar- 
racks —  couldn't  you  trust  a  woman  to  do  a  job  like  that  ? 
I  did  not  get  very  many  hung.  Captain  Hugh  Pritchitt, 
my  chief,  came  bursting  in  upon  me.  '  They're  here.'  he 
shouted. 

"  I  knew  what  that  meant.  e  They '  were  the  first  of 
our  American  wounded,  and  they  must  have  comfort  and 
help  and  immediate  attention.  They  got  it.  It  was  part 
of  our  job,  you  know.  And  after  that  part  was  organized 
there  was  nothing  to  it  but  to  come  back  to  Toul  and  set 
up  our  chain  of  canteens  there." 

And  you  already  know  how  very  well  that  particular  war 
job  was  done.  And  doing  it  involved  much  devotion  and 
endurance  and  self-sacrifice,  not  only  on  the  part  of  the 
directress,  but  on  that  of  her  staff  of  capable  assistants. 

Talk  about  devotion  and  endurance  and  self-sacrifice ! 
Into  the  desolate  ruin  of  the  war-racked  city  of  Kheims 
there  walked  last  October  two  American  Eed  Cross  women 
on  a  sight-seeing  trip.  They  had  had  months  of  hard 
canteen  work  and  were  well  tired  out,  and  were  about  to 
return  home.  In  a  week  or  so  of  leave  they  went  to  Rheims 
because  that  once  busy  city  with  its  dominating  cathedral 
has  become  the  world's  new  Pompeii.  And  the  man  or 


288  WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

woman  who  visits  France  without  seeing  it  has  missed 
seeing  the  one  thing  of  almost  supreme  horror  and  interest 
in  the  world  to-day. 

The  two  Red  Cross  women  had  but  a  single  day  to  see 
Eheims.  That  was  last  October.  They  still  are  there; 
for  back  of  the  ruins,  back  of  the  gaunt,  scarred  hulk  of 
that  vast  church  which  was  once  the  pride  of  France,  and 
to  day  the  symbol  of  Calvary  through  which  she  had  just 
passed,  there  rose  the  question  in  their  minds:  what  has 
become  of  the  folk  of  this  town?  It  was  the  sort  of 
question  that  does  not  down.  Nor  were  the  two  women 

—  one  is  Miss  Emily  Bennet  of  the  faculty  of  a  fashionable 
girls'  school  in  New  York  and  the  other  Miss  Catherine 
Biddle  Porter  of  Philadelphia  —  the  sort  that  close  their 
souls  to  questions  such  as  these. 

They  found  the  answer.  It  was  in  the  basement  of  the 
commercial  high  school  —  a  dreary,  high-ceil inged  place, 
but  because  of  its  comparatively  modern  construction  of 
steel  and  brick  a  sort  of  abri  or  bombproof  refuge  for  the 
three  or  four  hundred  citizens  that  stuck  it  out  through  the 
four  years  of  horror.  In  that  basement  place  of  safety  an 
aged  school-teacher  of  the  town,  Mademoiselle  Fourreaux, 
month  in  and  month  out,  prepared  two  meals  a  day- 
bread  and  soup  —  for  the  group  of  refugees  that  gathered 
round  about  her  and  literally  kept  the  heart  of  Rheims 
abeat.  The  Red  Cross  women  found  this  aged  heroine 

—  she  confesses  to  having  turned  seventy  —  working  un- 
aided, and  within  the  hour  were  working  with  her,  sending 
word  back  to  Paris  to  send  up  a  few  necessary  articles 
of  comfort  and  of  clothing.     That  night  they  slept  in 
Rheims,  and  were  billeted  in  a  house  whose  windows  had 
been  crudely  replaced  with  oiled  paper  and  whose  roof  was 
half  gone. 

In  a  short  time  relief  came  to  them.  The  American 
Red  Cross  sent  in  other  supplies  and  workers  and  estab- 
lished a  much  larger  and  finer  canteen  relief  in  another 
section  of  the  town.  Other  organizations  —  French  and 


THE  GIRL  WHO  WENT  TO  WAE  289 

>ritish  and  American  —  poured  in  relief ;  but  Miss  Ben- 
nett and  Miss  Porter  stuck  it  out,  and  soon  began  to  reap 
the  fruit  of  their  great  endeavors. 

I  have  cited  here  a  few  instances  of  women  who  have 
gone  overseas  —  frequently  at  great  personal  sacrifices  — 
to  help  bear  the  burden  of  the  war.  If  space  had  permitted 
I  might  easily  have  given  five  hundred,  and  each  of  them 
would  have  had  its  own  personal  little  dramatic  story. 
I  might  simply  tell  of  some  of  the  women  whom  I  have 
met  on  the  job;  of  Miss  Lucy  Duhring  of  Philadelphia, 
setting  up  the  women's  work  of  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  in  the 
leave  areas  of  the  occupied  territory;  of  a  girl  superin- 
tendent of  schools  from  Kansas,  working  in  the  hospital 
records  for  the  Red  Cross  at  Toul;  of  another  girl  from 
Kingston-on-Hudson  running  a  big  Y.  W.  C.  A.  hotel 
for  army  girls  in  Paris  and  running  it  mighty  well;  of 
still  another  woman  —  this  one  a  welfare  worker  from  a 
big  industrial  plant  in  Kansas  City  —  as  the  guiding 
spirit  in  the  hostess  house  at  Coblenz.  The  list  quickly 
spins  to  great  lengths.  It  is  a  tremendously  embracing 
one,  and  when  one  gazes  at  it,  he  begins  to  realize  what 
effect  this  great  adventure  overseas  is  going  to  have  upon 
the  lives  of  the  women  who  participated  in  it;  how  it  is 
going  to  change  the  conventions  of  life,  or  its  amenities, 
or  its  opportunities.  How  will  the  weeks  and  months  of 
camaraderie  with  khaki-clad  men,  under  all  conditions 
and  all  circumstances  affect  them?  Many  of  the  silly 
conventionalities  of  ordinary  life  and  under  ordinary  con- 
ditions of  peace,  have,  of  necessity,  been  thrown  away  over 
there.  Men  and  women  have  made  long  trips  together, 
in  train  or  in  motor  car,  and  have  thought  or  made  nothing 
of  it  whatever.  On  the  night  train  up  from  Aix  les-Bains 
to  Paris  on  one  of  those  never-to-be-forgotten  nights  the 
autumn  the  conflict  still  raged,  two  girls  of  the  A.  E.  F. 
found  it  quite  impossible  to  obtain  seats  of  any  sort. 
Four  or  five  marines,  back  from  a  short  leave  in  a  little 


290     WITH  THE  DOUGHBOY  IN  FRANCE 

town  near  there,  did  the  best  they  could  for  them  and  with 
their  blankets  and  dunny  rolls  rigged  crude  beds  for  them 
in  the  aisle  of  a  first-class  car,  and  there  the  girls  rode  all 
night  to  Paris  while  the  marines  stood  guard  over  them. 

The  gray-uniformed  woman  war-worker  knows  that  she 
may  trust  the  American  soldier.  Her  experience  with  the 
doughboy  has  been  large  and  so  her  tribute  to  the  high 
qualities  of  his  manhood  is  of  very  real  value.  Moreover, 
she  too,  has  seen  real  service,  both  in  canteen  work  and  in 
the  still  more  important  leave  area  work  which  has  followed 
—  this  last  the  great  problem  of  keeping  the  idle  soldier 
healthily  amused. 

"  I  have  known  our  girls,"  she  will  tell  you,  "  to  go 
into  a  miserable  little  French  or  German  town  filled  with 
a  thousand  or  twelve  hundred  American  boys  in  khaki 
and  in  a  day  change  the  entire  spirit  of  that  community. 
There  has  been  a  dance  one  night,  for  instance,  with  the 
boys  restless  and  trying  stupidly  to  dance  with  one  another, 
or  in  some  cases,  even  bringing  in  the  rough  little  village 
girls  from  the  streets  outside.  But  the  next  dance  has 
seen  a  transformation.  The  girls  of  the  A.  E.  F.  have 
come,  they  are  dancing  with  the  men ;  there  is  cheer  and 
decency  in  the  very  air,  there  are  neither  French  nor  Ger- 
man present  —  the  place  is  American. 

"  You  have  told  of  what  the  American  girl  has  been  to 
the  men  of  our  army ;  let  me  tell,  in  a  word,  what  the  army 
has  been  to  the  American  woman  who  has  worked  with  it : 
We  have  trusted  our  enlisted  men  in  khaki  and  not  once 
found  that  trust  misplaced.  Night  and  day  have  we 
placed  our  honor  in  their  hands  and  never  have  trusted 
in  vain." 

"  The  reason  why  ?  "  we  venture. 

"  The  mothers  of  America,"  is  the  quick  reply. 

I  know  what  she  means.  I  have  read  letter  after  letter 
written  by  the  doughboys  to  the  mothers  back  here,  and 
the  mass  of  them  still  stay  in  my  mind  as  a  tribute 
that  all  but  surpasses  description.  Some  of  them  mis- 


THE  GIRL  WHO  WENT  TO  WAR  291 

spelled ;  many  of  them  ungrammatical  —  where  have  our 
schools  been  these  last  few  years  ?  —  a  few  of  them  humor- 
ous, a  few  pathetic,  but  all  of  them  breathing  a  sentiment 
and  a  tenderness  that  makes  me  willing  to  call  ours  the 
sentimental  as  well  as  the  amazing  army.  Add  to  these 
letters  the  verbal  testimony  of  the  boys  to  the  women  of 
their  army. 

"  We're  not  doing  much,"  one  after  another  has  said. 
"  but  say,  you  ought  to  see  my  mother  on  the  job  back 
home.  She's  the  one  that's  turning  the  trick." 

It  was  a  large  experiment  sending  women  with  our  army 
overseas  —  in  the  minds  of  many  a  most  dubious  experi- 
ment. In  no  other  war  had  an  army  ever  had  women  en- 
rolled with  it,  save  possibly  a  few  nurses.  It  is  an  experi- 
ment which,  so  far  as  the  United  States  is  concerned,  has 
more  than  justified  itself.  Our  women  have  been  tried  in 
France  —  in  other  European  lands  as  well  —  and  have 
not  been  found  wanting ;  which  is  a  very  faint  way,  indeed, 
of  trying  to  tell,  of  a  great  accomplishment.  For  if  the 
American  soldier,  through  many  months  of  test  and  trial 
—  and  test  and  trial  that  by  no  means  were  confined  to 
the  battlefield  —  has  kept  his  body  clean  and  his  soul  pure 
through  the  virtue  of  woman  which  has  been  spread  about 
him  through  the  guarded  years  of  his  home  life,  how  about 
the  virtue  of  the  women  that,  clad  in  the  uniform  of  our 
Eed  Cross  and  the  other  war-relief  organizations,  guarded 
him  successfully  when  he  was  far  away  from  home? 
There  is  but  one  answer  to  such  a  question,  but  one  ques- 
tion to  follow  after  that.  Here  it  is :  Is  it  fair  to  longer 
consider  such  a  real  accomplishment  a  mere  experiment  ?  I 
think  not.)  I  think  that  it  is  rather  to  be  regarded  as  a 
real  triumph  of  our  Americanism. 


THE 


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iVlAfl  'l  9  1049 

ffr  ["'    A-J   -     .  . 

. 

APR  18  1S42 

AUG  27  1943 

LD  21-100m-7,'39(402r,) 

VB  21182 


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